“Yet we have not considered that your case would be stronger still if it was necessary for you to buy another harp immediately, at the advanced price. Such is my case. I sell my cellar-full of labour in order to purchase a further supply at the present high price. Since I must buy, and must pay dear for what I buy, would it not be folly to sell the same article cheap?”
“The same article! I do not understand you. You would be wrong to hire yourself out for the money wages of a year ago:—to give the strength of your arm for what would buy much less bread: but——”
“But the wine in my cellars and the strength of my arm are equally labour, possessed by me. You may call the one primary, and the other secondary, if you like; but they are equally labour. Yes; all the capital we have,—whether the furniture of this room, or your olive presses, or my wine, is hoarded labour: the labour of the work-people from whom we purchased it.”
“That is curious. Then the price depends upon the labour——O no, there are your profits to be considered. The price depends upon the cost of production; which includes your capital as well as your men’s labour.”
“Call it all labour at once, if you like. Profits are the recompense of labour as much as wages: wages of primary, and profits of secondary or hoarded labour; whichever you please to call it.”
“Then why have you been perplexing yourself all this time about this exchange of goods with Steele? Cannot you reckon easily enough the present value of the labour contained in a pipe of wine? and will not this serve as a perfect measure?”
“Nothing ever served as a perfect measure of value yet; or ever will, in my opinion,” replied Charles. “Labour regulates the relative value of Steele’s fruit and my wine; but it can never measure the one against the other, or both against houses, or furniture, or money, or any other commodity. Do not you see that, while labour varies as it does, it can never serve as a measure?”
“To be sure, it is very different in its value this winter from what it was the last.”
“Suppose our milk-woman exchanged a quart of cream daily for a pint of coffee, at the coffee-shop opposite; and that the quart and pint pots grew larger or smaller according as the air was damp or dry. These pots would regulate the quantity of cream and coffee; but it would be absurd to call them measures, while the quantity they yield is incessantly varying.”
“Labour is affected by the seasons, I know; and it seems as if it must always be so, and as if there could therefore never be a fixed measure of value.”