Witness the question which occasioned these
inquiries, and which its authors certainly understand no better
than its disparagers,--THE RELATION OF PROFITS AND WAGES.
What! an Academy of economists has offered for competition a
question the terms of which it does not understand! How, then,
could it have conceived the idea?
Well! I know that my statement is astonishing and incredible; but
it is true. Like the theologians, who answer metaphysical
problems only by myths and allegories, which always reproduce the
problems but never solve them, the economists reply to the
questions which they ask only by relating how they were led to
ask them: should they conceive that it was possible to go
further, they would cease to be economists.
For example, what is profit? That which remains for the manager
after he has paid all the expenses. Now, the expenses consist of
the labor performed and the materials consumed; or, in fine,
wages. What, then, is the wages of a workingman? The least
that can be given him; that is, we do not know.
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