Useful value and exchangeable value
remain, then, in inevitable attachment, although it is their
nature continually to tend towards mutual exclusion.
I shall not fatigue the reader with a refutation of the
logomachies which might be offered in explanation of this
subject: of the contradiction inherent in the idea of value there
is no assignable cause, no possible explanation. The fact of
which I speak is one of those called primitive,--that is, one of
those which may serve to explain others, but which in themselves,
like the bodies called simple, are inexplicable. Such is the
dualism of spirit and matter. Spirit and matter are two terms
each of which, taken separately, indicates a special aspect of
spirit, but corresponds to no reality. So, given man's needs of
a great variety of products together with the obligation of
procuring them by his labor, the opposition of useful value to
exchangeable value necessarily results; and from this opposition
a contradiction on the very threshold of political economy.
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