39 The Northamptonshire
manufacturer
commits a pious fraud, pardonable in one whose heart is so full.
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
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Little thieves are put in the stocks, great thieves go flaunting in gold and silk.
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Therefore is there, on this earth, no greater enemy of man (after the devil) than a gripe-money, and usurer, for he wants to be God over all men.
Turks, soldiers, and tyrants are also bad men, yet must they let the people live, and Confess that they are bad, and enemies, and do, nay, must, now and then show pity to some.
But a usurer and money-glutton, such a one would have the whole world perish of hunger and thirst, misery and want, so far as in him lies, so that he may have all to himself, and every one may receive from him as from a God, and be his serf for ever.
To wear fine cloaks, golden chains, rings, to wipe his mouth, to be deemed and taken for a worthy, pious man .
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Usury is a great huge monster, like a werewolf, who lays waste all, more than any Cacus, Gerion or Antus.
And yet decks himself out, and would be thought pious, so that people
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may not see where the oxen have gone, that he drags backwards into his den. But Hercules shall hear the cry of the oxen and of his prisoners, and shall seek Cacus even in cliffs and among rocks, and shall set the oxen loose again from the villain. For Cacus means the villain that is a pious usurer, and steals, robs, eats everything. And will not own that he has done it, and thinks no one will find him out, because the oxen, drawn backwards into his den, make it seem, from their foot-prints, that they have been let out. So the usurer would deceive the world, as though he were of use and gave the world oxen, which he, however, rends, and eats all alone. . . And since we break on the wheel, and behead highwaymen, murderers and housebreakers, how much more ought we to break on the wheel and kill. . . . hunt down, curse and behead all usurers. ? (Martin Luther, l. c. )
21 See Goethe's --Faust. ?
22 Dr. Aikin: --Description of the Country from 30 to 40 miles round Manchester. ? Lond. , 1795, p. 182, sq.
23 A. Smith, l. c. , bk. iii. , ch. iii.
24 Even J. B. Say says: --Les e? pargnes des riches se font aux de? pens des pauvres. ? [the savings of the rich are made at the expense of the poor] --The Roman proletarian lived almost entirely at the expense of society. . . . It can almost be said that modern society lives at the expense of the proletarians, on what it keeps out of the remuneration of labour. ? (Sismondi: --e? tudes, &c. ,? t. i. , p. 24. )
25 Malthus, l. c. , pp. 319, 320.
26 --An Inquiry into those Principles Respecting the Nature of Demand, &c. ,? p. 67. 27 l. c. , p. 59.
28 (Senior, --Principes fondamentaux del'E? con. Pol. ? trad. Arrivabene. Paris, 1836, p. 308. ) This was rather too much for the adherents of the old classical school. --Mr. Senior has substituted for it? (the expression, labour and,profit) --the expression labour and Abstinence. He who converts his revenue abstains from the enjoyment which its expenditure would afford him. It is not the capital, but the use of the capital productively, which is the cause of profits. ? (John Cazenove, l. c. , p. 130, Note. ) John St. Mill, on the contrary, accepts on the one hand Ricardo's theory of profit, and annexes on the other hand Senior's --remuneration of abstinence. ? He is as much at home in absurd contradictions, as he feels at sea in the Hegelian contradiction, the source of all dialectic. It has never occurred to the vulgar economist to make the simple reflexion, that every human action may be viewed, as --abstinence? from its opposite. Eating is abstinence from fasting, walking, abstinence from standing still, working, abstinence from idling, idling, abstinence from working, &c. These gentlemen would do well, to ponder, once in a wwhile, over Spinoza's: --Determinatio est Negatio. ?
29 Senior, l. c. , p. 342.
30 --No one . . . will sow his wheat, for instance, and allow it to remain a twelvle month in the ground, or leave his wine in a cellar for years, instead of consuming these things or their equivalent at once . . . unless he expects to acquire additional value, &c. ? (Scrope, --Polit. Econ. ,? edit. by A. Potter, New York, 1841, pp. 133-134. )
31 --La privation que s'impose le capitaliste? , en pre^tant [The deprivation the capitalist imposes on himself by lending . . . ] (this euphemism used, for the purpose of identifying, according to the approved method of vulgar economy, the labourer who is exploited, with the industrial capitalist who exploits, and to whom other capitalists lend money) ses instruments de production au travailleur, au lieu d'en consacrer la valeur a` son propre usage, en la transforment en objets d'utilite? ou d'agre? ment. ? [his instruments of production to the worker, instead of devoting their value to his own consumption, by transforming them into objects of utility or pleasure] (G. de Molinari, l. c. , p. 36. )
32 --La conservation d'un capital exige . . . un effort constant pour re? sister a la tentation de le consommer. ? (Courcelle-Seneuil, l. c. , p. 57. )
? ? 424 Chapter 24
33 --The particular classes of income which yield the most abundantly to the progress of national capital, change at different stages of their progress, and are, therefore, entirely different in nations occupying different positions in that progress. . . . Profits . . . unimportant source of accumulation, compared with wages and rents, in the earlier stages of society. . . . When a considerable advance in the powers of national industry has actually taken place, profits rise into comparative importance as a source of accumulation. ? (Richard Jones, --Textbook, &c. ,? pp. 16, 21. )
34 l. c. , p. 36, sq.
35 --Ricardo says: ? In different stages of society the accumulation of capital or of the means of employing' (i. e. , exploiting) ? labour is more or less rapid, and must in all cases depend on the productive powers of labour. The productive powers of labour are generally greatest where there is an abundance of fertile land. ' If, in the first sentence, the productive powers of labour mean the smallness of that aliquot part of any produce that goes to those whose manual labour produced it, the sentence is nearly identical, because the remaining aliquot part is the fund whence capital can, if the owner pleases, be accumulated. But then this does not generally happen, where there is most fertile land. ? (--Observations on Certain Verbal Disputes, &c. ? pp. 74, 75. )
36 J. Stuart Mill: --Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy,? Lond. , 1844, p. 90.
37 --An Essay on Trade and Commerce,? Lond. , 1770, P. 44. The Times of December, 1866, and January, 1867, in like manner published certain outpourings of the heart of the English mine-owner, in which the happy lot of the Belgian miners was pictured, who asked and received no more than was strictly necessary for them to live for their --masters. ? The Belgian labourers have to suffer much, but to figure in The Times as model labourers! In the beginning of February, 1867, came the answer: strike of the Belgian miners at Marchienne, put down by powder and lead.
38 l. c. , pp. 44, 46.
39 The Northamptonshire manufacturer commits a pious fraud, pardonable in one whose heart is so full. He nominally compares the life of the English and French manufacturing labourer, but in the words just quoted he is painting, as he himself confesses in his confused way, the French agricultural labourers.
40 l. c. , pp. 70, 71. Note in the 3rd German edition: today, thanks to the competition on the world- market, established since then, we have advanced much further. --If China,? says Mr. Stapleton, M. P. , to his constituents, --should become a great manufacturing country, I do not see how the manufacturing population of Europe could sustain the contest without descending to the level of their competitors. ? (Times, Sept. 3, 1873, p. 8. ) The wished-for goal of English capital is no longer Continental wages but Chinese.
41 Benjamin Thompson: --Essays, Political, Economical, and Philosophical, &c. ,? 3 vols. , Lond, 1796- 1802, vol. i. , p. 294. In his --The State of the Poor, or an History of the labouring Classes in England, &c. ,? Sir F. M. Eden strongly recommends the Rumfordian beggar-soup to workhouse overseers, and reproachfully warns the English labourers that --many poor people, particularly in Scotland, live, and that very comfortably, for months together, upon oat-meal and barley-meal, mixed with only water and salt. ? (l. c. , vol. i, book i. , ch. 2, p. 503. ) The same sort of hints in the 19th century. --The most wholesome mixtures of flour having been refused (by the English agricultural labourer). . . in Scotland, where education is better, this prejudice is, probably, unknown. ? (Charles H. Parry, M. D. , --The Question of the Necessecity of the Existing Corn Laws Considered. ? London, 1816,, p. 69. ) This same Parry, however, complains that the English labourer is now (1815) in a much worse condition than in Eden's time (1797. )
42 From the reports of the last Parliamentary Commission on adulteration of means of subsistence, it will be seen that the adulteration even of medicines is the rule, not the exception in England. E. g. , the
? ? 425 Chapter 24
examination of 34 specimens of opium, purchased of as many different chemists in London, showed that 31 were adulterated with poppy heads, wheat-flour, gum, clay, sand, &c. Several did not contain an atom of morphia.
43 G. B. Newnham (barrister-at-law): --A Review of the Evidence before the Committee of the two Houses of Parliament on the Com Laws. ? Lond. , 1815, p. 20, note.
44 l. c. , pp. 19, 20.
45 C. H. Parry, l. c. , pp. 77, 69. The landlords, on their side, not only --indemnified? themselves for the Anti-Jacobin War, which they waged in the name of England, but enriched themselves enormously. Their rents doubled, trebled, quadrupled, --and in one instance, increased sixfold in eighteen years. ? (I. c. , pp. 100, 101. )
46 Friedrich Engels, --Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England,? p. 20.
47 lassic economy has, on account of a deficient analysis of the labour process, and of the process of creating value-, never properly grasped this weighty element of reproduction, as may be seen in Ricardo; he says, e. g. , whatever the change in productive power, --a million men always produce in manufactures the same value. ? This is accurate, if the extension and degree of Intensity of their labour are given. But it does not prevent (this Ricardo overlooks in certain conclusions he draws) a million men with different powers of productivity in their labour, turning into products very different masses of the means of production, and therefore preserving in their products very different masses of value; in consequence of which the values of the products yielded may vary considerably. Ricardo has, it may be noted in passing, tried in vain to make clear to J. B. Say, by that very example, the difference between use value (which he here calls wealth or material riches) and exchange-value. Say answers: --Quant a` la difficulte? qu'e? le`ve Mr. Ricardo en disant que, par des proce? de? s mieux entendus un million de personnes peuvent produire deux fois, trois fois autant de richesses, sans produire plus de valeurs, cette difficulte? n'est pas une lorsque l'on conside? re, ainsi qu'on le doit, la production comme un e? change dans lequel on donne les services productifs de son travail, de sa terre, et de ses capitaux, pour obtenir des produits. C'est par le moyen de ces services productifs, que nous acque? rons tous les produits qui sont au monde. Or. . . nous sommes d'autant plus riches, nos services productifs ont d'autant plus de valeur qu'ils obtiennent dans l'e? change appele? production une plus grande quantite? de choses utiles. ? [As for the difficulty raised by Ricardo when he says that, by using better methods of production, a million people can produce two or three times as much wealth, without producing any more value, this difficulty disappears when one bears in mind, as one should, that production is like an exchange in which a man contributes the productive services of his labour, his land, and his capital, in order to obtain products. It is by means of these productive services that we acquire all the products existing in the world. Therefore . . . we are richer, our productive services have the more value, the greater the quantity of useful things they bring in through the exchange which is called production] (J. B. Say, --Lettres a` M. Malthus,? Paris, 1820, pp. 168, 169. ) The --difficulte? ? -- it exists for him, not for Ricardo -- that Say means to clear up is this: Why does not the exchange-value of the use values increase, when their quantity increases in consequence of increased productive power of labour? Answer: the difficulty is met by calling use value, exchange-value, if you please. Exchange-value is a thing that is connected one way or another with exchange. If therefore production is called an exchange of labour and means of production against the product, it is clear as day that you obtain more exchange-value in proportion as the production yields more use value. In other words, the more use values, e. g. , stockings, a working day yields to the stocking-manufacturer, the richer is he in stockings. Suddenly, however, Say recollects that --with a greater quantity? of stockings their --price? (which of course has nothing to do with their exchange-value! ) falls --parce que la concurrence les (les producteurs) oblige a` donner les produits pour ce qu'ils leur cou^tent. . . [because competition obliges them (the producers) to sell their products for what they cost to make] But whence does the profit
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come, if the capitalist sells the commodities at cost-price? Never mind! Say declares that, in consequence of increased productivity, every one now receives in return for a given equivalent two pairs of stockings instead of one as before. The result he arrives at, is precisely that proposition of Ricardo that he aimed at disproving. After this mighty effort of thought, he triumphantly apostrophises Malthus in the words: --Telle est, monsieur, la doctrine bien lie? e, sans laquelle il est impossible, je le de? clare, d'expliquer les plus grandes difficulte? s de l'e? conomie politique, et notamment, comment il se peut qu'une nation soit plus riche lorsque ses produits diminuent de valeur, quoique la richesse soit de la valeur. ? [This, Sir, is the well-founded doctrine without which it is impossible, I say, to explain the greatest difficulties in political economy, and, in particular, to explain why it is that a nation can be richer when its products fall in value, even though wealth is value] (l. c. , p. 170. ) An English economist remarks upon the conjuring tricks of the same nature that appear in Say's --Lettres? : --Those affected ways of talking make up in general that which M. Say is pleased to call his doctrine and which he earnestly urges Malthus to teach at Hertford, as it is already taught ? dans plusieurs parties de l'Europe. ' He says, ? Si vous trouvez une physionomie de paradoxe a` toutes ces propositions, voyez les choses qu'elles expriment, et j'ose croire qu'elles vous parai^tront fort simples et fort raisonnables. ' [in numerous parts of Europe . . . If all those propositions appear paradoxical to you, look at the things they express, and I venture to believe that they will then appear very simple and very rational] Doubtless, and in consequence of the same process, they will appear everything else, except original. ? (--An Inquiry into those Principles Respecting the Nature of Demand, &c. ,? pp. 116, 110. )
48 MacCulloch took out a patent for --wages of past labour,? long before Senior did for --wages of abstinence. ?
49 Compare among others, Jeremy Bentham: --The? orie des Peines et des Re? compenses,? traduct. d'Et. Dumont, 3e`me e? dit. Paris, 1826, t. II, L. IV. , ch. II.
50 Bentham is a purely English phenomenon. Not even excepting our philosopher, Christian Wolff, in no time and in no country has the most homespun commonplace ever strutted about in so self-satisfied a way. The principle of utility was no discovery of Bentham. He simply reproduced in his dull way what Helve? tius and other Frenchmen had said with esprit in the 18th century. To know what is useful for a dog, one must study dog-nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he that would criticise all human acts, movements, relations, etc. , by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch. Bentham makes short work of it. With the driest naivete? he takes the modern shopkeeper, especially the English shopkeeper, as the normal man. Whatever is useful to this queer normal man, and to his world, is absolutely useful. This yard-measure, then, he applies to past, present, and future. The Christian religion, e.
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may not see where the oxen have gone, that he drags backwards into his den. But Hercules shall hear the cry of the oxen and of his prisoners, and shall seek Cacus even in cliffs and among rocks, and shall set the oxen loose again from the villain. For Cacus means the villain that is a pious usurer, and steals, robs, eats everything. And will not own that he has done it, and thinks no one will find him out, because the oxen, drawn backwards into his den, make it seem, from their foot-prints, that they have been let out. So the usurer would deceive the world, as though he were of use and gave the world oxen, which he, however, rends, and eats all alone. . . And since we break on the wheel, and behead highwaymen, murderers and housebreakers, how much more ought we to break on the wheel and kill. . . . hunt down, curse and behead all usurers. ? (Martin Luther, l. c. )
21 See Goethe's --Faust. ?
22 Dr. Aikin: --Description of the Country from 30 to 40 miles round Manchester. ? Lond. , 1795, p. 182, sq.
23 A. Smith, l. c. , bk. iii. , ch. iii.
24 Even J. B. Say says: --Les e? pargnes des riches se font aux de? pens des pauvres. ? [the savings of the rich are made at the expense of the poor] --The Roman proletarian lived almost entirely at the expense of society. . . . It can almost be said that modern society lives at the expense of the proletarians, on what it keeps out of the remuneration of labour. ? (Sismondi: --e? tudes, &c. ,? t. i. , p. 24. )
25 Malthus, l. c. , pp. 319, 320.
26 --An Inquiry into those Principles Respecting the Nature of Demand, &c. ,? p. 67. 27 l. c. , p. 59.
28 (Senior, --Principes fondamentaux del'E? con. Pol. ? trad. Arrivabene. Paris, 1836, p. 308. ) This was rather too much for the adherents of the old classical school. --Mr. Senior has substituted for it? (the expression, labour and,profit) --the expression labour and Abstinence. He who converts his revenue abstains from the enjoyment which its expenditure would afford him. It is not the capital, but the use of the capital productively, which is the cause of profits. ? (John Cazenove, l. c. , p. 130, Note. ) John St. Mill, on the contrary, accepts on the one hand Ricardo's theory of profit, and annexes on the other hand Senior's --remuneration of abstinence. ? He is as much at home in absurd contradictions, as he feels at sea in the Hegelian contradiction, the source of all dialectic. It has never occurred to the vulgar economist to make the simple reflexion, that every human action may be viewed, as --abstinence? from its opposite. Eating is abstinence from fasting, walking, abstinence from standing still, working, abstinence from idling, idling, abstinence from working, &c. These gentlemen would do well, to ponder, once in a wwhile, over Spinoza's: --Determinatio est Negatio. ?
29 Senior, l. c. , p. 342.
30 --No one . . . will sow his wheat, for instance, and allow it to remain a twelvle month in the ground, or leave his wine in a cellar for years, instead of consuming these things or their equivalent at once . . . unless he expects to acquire additional value, &c. ? (Scrope, --Polit. Econ. ,? edit. by A. Potter, New York, 1841, pp. 133-134. )
31 --La privation que s'impose le capitaliste? , en pre^tant [The deprivation the capitalist imposes on himself by lending . . . ] (this euphemism used, for the purpose of identifying, according to the approved method of vulgar economy, the labourer who is exploited, with the industrial capitalist who exploits, and to whom other capitalists lend money) ses instruments de production au travailleur, au lieu d'en consacrer la valeur a` son propre usage, en la transforment en objets d'utilite? ou d'agre? ment. ? [his instruments of production to the worker, instead of devoting their value to his own consumption, by transforming them into objects of utility or pleasure] (G. de Molinari, l. c. , p. 36. )
32 --La conservation d'un capital exige . . . un effort constant pour re? sister a la tentation de le consommer. ? (Courcelle-Seneuil, l. c. , p. 57. )
? ? 424 Chapter 24
33 --The particular classes of income which yield the most abundantly to the progress of national capital, change at different stages of their progress, and are, therefore, entirely different in nations occupying different positions in that progress. . . . Profits . . . unimportant source of accumulation, compared with wages and rents, in the earlier stages of society. . . . When a considerable advance in the powers of national industry has actually taken place, profits rise into comparative importance as a source of accumulation. ? (Richard Jones, --Textbook, &c. ,? pp. 16, 21. )
34 l. c. , p. 36, sq.
35 --Ricardo says: ? In different stages of society the accumulation of capital or of the means of employing' (i. e. , exploiting) ? labour is more or less rapid, and must in all cases depend on the productive powers of labour. The productive powers of labour are generally greatest where there is an abundance of fertile land. ' If, in the first sentence, the productive powers of labour mean the smallness of that aliquot part of any produce that goes to those whose manual labour produced it, the sentence is nearly identical, because the remaining aliquot part is the fund whence capital can, if the owner pleases, be accumulated. But then this does not generally happen, where there is most fertile land. ? (--Observations on Certain Verbal Disputes, &c. ? pp. 74, 75. )
36 J. Stuart Mill: --Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy,? Lond. , 1844, p. 90.
37 --An Essay on Trade and Commerce,? Lond. , 1770, P. 44. The Times of December, 1866, and January, 1867, in like manner published certain outpourings of the heart of the English mine-owner, in which the happy lot of the Belgian miners was pictured, who asked and received no more than was strictly necessary for them to live for their --masters. ? The Belgian labourers have to suffer much, but to figure in The Times as model labourers! In the beginning of February, 1867, came the answer: strike of the Belgian miners at Marchienne, put down by powder and lead.
38 l. c. , pp. 44, 46.
39 The Northamptonshire manufacturer commits a pious fraud, pardonable in one whose heart is so full. He nominally compares the life of the English and French manufacturing labourer, but in the words just quoted he is painting, as he himself confesses in his confused way, the French agricultural labourers.
40 l. c. , pp. 70, 71. Note in the 3rd German edition: today, thanks to the competition on the world- market, established since then, we have advanced much further. --If China,? says Mr. Stapleton, M. P. , to his constituents, --should become a great manufacturing country, I do not see how the manufacturing population of Europe could sustain the contest without descending to the level of their competitors. ? (Times, Sept. 3, 1873, p. 8. ) The wished-for goal of English capital is no longer Continental wages but Chinese.
41 Benjamin Thompson: --Essays, Political, Economical, and Philosophical, &c. ,? 3 vols. , Lond, 1796- 1802, vol. i. , p. 294. In his --The State of the Poor, or an History of the labouring Classes in England, &c. ,? Sir F. M. Eden strongly recommends the Rumfordian beggar-soup to workhouse overseers, and reproachfully warns the English labourers that --many poor people, particularly in Scotland, live, and that very comfortably, for months together, upon oat-meal and barley-meal, mixed with only water and salt. ? (l. c. , vol. i, book i. , ch. 2, p. 503. ) The same sort of hints in the 19th century. --The most wholesome mixtures of flour having been refused (by the English agricultural labourer). . . in Scotland, where education is better, this prejudice is, probably, unknown. ? (Charles H. Parry, M. D. , --The Question of the Necessecity of the Existing Corn Laws Considered. ? London, 1816,, p. 69. ) This same Parry, however, complains that the English labourer is now (1815) in a much worse condition than in Eden's time (1797. )
42 From the reports of the last Parliamentary Commission on adulteration of means of subsistence, it will be seen that the adulteration even of medicines is the rule, not the exception in England. E. g. , the
? ? 425 Chapter 24
examination of 34 specimens of opium, purchased of as many different chemists in London, showed that 31 were adulterated with poppy heads, wheat-flour, gum, clay, sand, &c. Several did not contain an atom of morphia.
43 G. B. Newnham (barrister-at-law): --A Review of the Evidence before the Committee of the two Houses of Parliament on the Com Laws. ? Lond. , 1815, p. 20, note.
44 l. c. , pp. 19, 20.
45 C. H. Parry, l. c. , pp. 77, 69. The landlords, on their side, not only --indemnified? themselves for the Anti-Jacobin War, which they waged in the name of England, but enriched themselves enormously. Their rents doubled, trebled, quadrupled, --and in one instance, increased sixfold in eighteen years. ? (I. c. , pp. 100, 101. )
46 Friedrich Engels, --Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England,? p. 20.
47 lassic economy has, on account of a deficient analysis of the labour process, and of the process of creating value-, never properly grasped this weighty element of reproduction, as may be seen in Ricardo; he says, e. g. , whatever the change in productive power, --a million men always produce in manufactures the same value. ? This is accurate, if the extension and degree of Intensity of their labour are given. But it does not prevent (this Ricardo overlooks in certain conclusions he draws) a million men with different powers of productivity in their labour, turning into products very different masses of the means of production, and therefore preserving in their products very different masses of value; in consequence of which the values of the products yielded may vary considerably. Ricardo has, it may be noted in passing, tried in vain to make clear to J. B. Say, by that very example, the difference between use value (which he here calls wealth or material riches) and exchange-value. Say answers: --Quant a` la difficulte? qu'e? le`ve Mr. Ricardo en disant que, par des proce? de? s mieux entendus un million de personnes peuvent produire deux fois, trois fois autant de richesses, sans produire plus de valeurs, cette difficulte? n'est pas une lorsque l'on conside? re, ainsi qu'on le doit, la production comme un e? change dans lequel on donne les services productifs de son travail, de sa terre, et de ses capitaux, pour obtenir des produits. C'est par le moyen de ces services productifs, que nous acque? rons tous les produits qui sont au monde. Or. . . nous sommes d'autant plus riches, nos services productifs ont d'autant plus de valeur qu'ils obtiennent dans l'e? change appele? production une plus grande quantite? de choses utiles. ? [As for the difficulty raised by Ricardo when he says that, by using better methods of production, a million people can produce two or three times as much wealth, without producing any more value, this difficulty disappears when one bears in mind, as one should, that production is like an exchange in which a man contributes the productive services of his labour, his land, and his capital, in order to obtain products. It is by means of these productive services that we acquire all the products existing in the world. Therefore . . . we are richer, our productive services have the more value, the greater the quantity of useful things they bring in through the exchange which is called production] (J. B. Say, --Lettres a` M. Malthus,? Paris, 1820, pp. 168, 169. ) The --difficulte? ? -- it exists for him, not for Ricardo -- that Say means to clear up is this: Why does not the exchange-value of the use values increase, when their quantity increases in consequence of increased productive power of labour? Answer: the difficulty is met by calling use value, exchange-value, if you please. Exchange-value is a thing that is connected one way or another with exchange. If therefore production is called an exchange of labour and means of production against the product, it is clear as day that you obtain more exchange-value in proportion as the production yields more use value. In other words, the more use values, e. g. , stockings, a working day yields to the stocking-manufacturer, the richer is he in stockings. Suddenly, however, Say recollects that --with a greater quantity? of stockings their --price? (which of course has nothing to do with their exchange-value! ) falls --parce que la concurrence les (les producteurs) oblige a` donner les produits pour ce qu'ils leur cou^tent. . . [because competition obliges them (the producers) to sell their products for what they cost to make] But whence does the profit
? ? 426 Chapter 24
come, if the capitalist sells the commodities at cost-price? Never mind! Say declares that, in consequence of increased productivity, every one now receives in return for a given equivalent two pairs of stockings instead of one as before. The result he arrives at, is precisely that proposition of Ricardo that he aimed at disproving. After this mighty effort of thought, he triumphantly apostrophises Malthus in the words: --Telle est, monsieur, la doctrine bien lie? e, sans laquelle il est impossible, je le de? clare, d'expliquer les plus grandes difficulte? s de l'e? conomie politique, et notamment, comment il se peut qu'une nation soit plus riche lorsque ses produits diminuent de valeur, quoique la richesse soit de la valeur. ? [This, Sir, is the well-founded doctrine without which it is impossible, I say, to explain the greatest difficulties in political economy, and, in particular, to explain why it is that a nation can be richer when its products fall in value, even though wealth is value] (l. c. , p. 170. ) An English economist remarks upon the conjuring tricks of the same nature that appear in Say's --Lettres? : --Those affected ways of talking make up in general that which M. Say is pleased to call his doctrine and which he earnestly urges Malthus to teach at Hertford, as it is already taught ? dans plusieurs parties de l'Europe. ' He says, ? Si vous trouvez une physionomie de paradoxe a` toutes ces propositions, voyez les choses qu'elles expriment, et j'ose croire qu'elles vous parai^tront fort simples et fort raisonnables. ' [in numerous parts of Europe . . . If all those propositions appear paradoxical to you, look at the things they express, and I venture to believe that they will then appear very simple and very rational] Doubtless, and in consequence of the same process, they will appear everything else, except original. ? (--An Inquiry into those Principles Respecting the Nature of Demand, &c. ,? pp. 116, 110. )
48 MacCulloch took out a patent for --wages of past labour,? long before Senior did for --wages of abstinence. ?
49 Compare among others, Jeremy Bentham: --The? orie des Peines et des Re? compenses,? traduct. d'Et. Dumont, 3e`me e? dit. Paris, 1826, t. II, L. IV. , ch. II.
50 Bentham is a purely English phenomenon. Not even excepting our philosopher, Christian Wolff, in no time and in no country has the most homespun commonplace ever strutted about in so self-satisfied a way. The principle of utility was no discovery of Bentham. He simply reproduced in his dull way what Helve? tius and other Frenchmen had said with esprit in the 18th century. To know what is useful for a dog, one must study dog-nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he that would criticise all human acts, movements, relations, etc. , by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch. Bentham makes short work of it. With the driest naivete? he takes the modern shopkeeper, especially the English shopkeeper, as the normal man. Whatever is useful to this queer normal man, and to his world, is absolutely useful. This yard-measure, then, he applies to past, present, and future. The Christian religion, e.
