“ἐκαστου γὰρ κτήματος διττὴ ἡ χρῆσις ἐστιν ... ἡ μὲν οἰκεία, ἡ δ ‘οὐκ οἰκεια τού ‘πράγματος, οῖον ὑποδηματος ἥ τε ὑπόδησις καὶ ἡ μεταβλητική. Ἀμφότεραι γὰρ hὑποδηματος χρήσεις· καὶ γὰρ hἡ ἀλλαττομενος τῷ δεομένω hὑποδηματος ἀντὶ νομίσματος ἡ τροφῆς χρῆται τῷ ὑποδηματι ἧ hὑπόδημα, ἀλλ ‘οὐ τὴν οἰκείαν χρῆσιν· οὐ γὰρ ἀλλαγης ἕνεκεν γέγονεν. Τὸν αὐτον δὲ τρόπον ἕχει καὶ περὶ τῶν ἅλλων κτημάτων.”
(“Of everything which we possess there are two uses:—one is the proper, and the other the improper or secondary use of it. For example, a shoe is used for wear, and is used for exchange; both are uses of the shoe. He who gives a shoe in exchange for money or food to him who wants one, does indeed use the shoe as a shoe, but this is not its proper or primary purpose, for a shoe is not made to be an object of barter. The same may be said of all possessions.” The Politics of Aristotle, translated into English by B. Jowett, Oxford, 1885, v. I., p. 15.)
[3] That is the reason why German compilers are so fond of dwelling on use-value, calling it a “good.” See e. g. L. Stein, “System der Staatswissenschaften,” v. I., chapter on “goods” (Gütter). For intelligent information on “goods” one must turn to treatises on commodities.
[4] A ridiculous presumption has gained currency of late to the effect that common property in its primitive form is specifically a Slavonian, or even exclusively Russian form. It is the primitive form which we can prove to have existed among Romans, Teutons, and Celts; and of which numerous examples are still to be found in India, though in a partly ruined state. A closer study of the Asiatic, especially of Indian forms of communal ownership would show how from the different forms of primitive communism different forms of its dissolution have been developed. Thus e. g. the various original types of Roman and Teutonic private property can be traced back to various forms of Indian communism.
[5] “La Ricchezza è una ragione tra due persone.” (“Value is a relation between two persons”) Galiani, “Della Moneta,” p. 220 in vol. II. of Custodi’s collection of “Scrittori classici Italiani di Economia Politica. Parte Moderna,” Milano, 1803.
[6] “In its natural state, matter ... is always destitute of value.” McCulloch, “A Discourse on the Rise, Progress, Peculiar Objects, and Importance of Political Economy,” 2nd edition, Edinburgh, 1825, pg. 48. It is evident how even a McCulloch stands above the fetishism of German “thinkers”, who declare “matter” and half a dozen other foreign things to be elements of value. Cf. e. g. L. Stein, l. c. v. I., p. 110.
[7] Berkeley, The Querist, London, 1750.
[8] Thomas Cooper, Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy, London, 1831, p. 99.
[9] F. List could never grasp the difference between labor as a source of use-value and labor as the creator of certain social form of wealth or exchange value, because comprehension was altogether foreign to his practical mind; he therefore saw in the modern English economists mere plagiarists of Moses, the Egyptian.
[10] It can be readily understood what kind of “service” is rendered by the category “service” to economists of the type of J. B. Say and F. Bastiat, whose pondering sagacity, as Malthus has justly remarked, always abstracts from the specially definite forms of economic relations.