[210-4] With the exception of the profit made by the manufacturers.
[210-5] Strikingly ignored by Sismondi, N. P., IV, ch. II.
[210-6] Bastiat, Sophismes économiques, 1847, ch. IV. Everything which, in the long run, either promotes or injures production, "steps over the producer and turns in the end to the gain or loss of the consumer." Only for this principle, inequality and dissensions among men would keep growing perpetually. All that the systems of Saint Simonism and communism contain that is relatively true is thus realized.
NATURE AND KINDS OF CONSUMPTION.—PRODUCTIVE CONSUMPTION.
There is no production possible without consumption. The embodiment of a special utility into any substance is a limitation of its general utility. Thus, for instance, when corn is baked into bread, it can no longer be used for the manufacture of brandy or of starch.[211-1]
When, therefore, consumption is a condition (outlay) to production it is called productive (reproductive).[211-2] Here, indeed, the form of the consumed goods is destroyed, but the value of the goods lives on in the new product.
There are different degrees of productiveness in consumption also. Thus, to a scholar, his outlay for books in his own branch is immediately productive; but nevertheless, books in departments of literature very remote from his own, pleasure trips, etc. may serve as nutrition and as a stimulus to his mind. According to § 52, we are compelled to consider all consumption productive which constitutes a necessary means towards the satisfaction of a real economic want. We may, indeed, distinguish between productive consumption in aid of material goods, of personal goods and useful relations; but in estimating the productiveness of these different sorts of consumption we are concerned not so much with the nature of the consumption as the results in relation to the nation's wants. The powder that explodes when a powder magazine burns is consumed unproductively; but the powder shot away in war may be productively consumed just as that used to explode a mine may be unproductively consumed; for instance, when the war is a just and victorious one and the mining enterprise has failed.[211-3]
The maintenance or support of those workmen whom they themselves acknowledge to be productive is presumably accounted productive consumption by all political economists. Why not, therefore, the cost of supporting and educating our children, who, it is to be hoped, will grow up later to be productive workmen. Man's labor-power is, doubtless, one of the greatest of all economic goods. But without the means of subsistence, it would die out in a few days. Hence we may, and even without an atomistic enumeration of the individual services and products of labor, consider the continued duration of that labor-power itself as the continued duration of the value of the consumed means of subsistence.[211-4]
[211-1] Even when air-dried bricks are made from water and clay which cost nothing; when purely occupatory work is done, and purely intellectual labor performed, some consumption of the means of subsistence by the workmen is always necessary.