Now, the effect of labor is continually to eliminate scarcity and
opinion as constitutive elements of value, and, by necessary
consequence, to transform natural or indefinite utilities
(appropriated or not) into measurable or social utilities: whence
it follows that labor is at once a war declared upon the
parsimony of Nature and a permanent conspiracy against property.
According to this analysis, value, considered from the point of
view of the association which producers, by division of labor and
by exchange, naturally form among themselves, is the PROPORTIONAL
RELATION OF THE PRODUCTS WHICH CONSTITUTE WEALTH, and what we
call the value of any special product is a formula which
expresses, in terms of money, the proportion of this product to
the general wealth.--Utility is the basis of value; labor fixes
the relation; the price is the expression which, barring the
fluctuations that we shall have to consider, indicates this
relation.
Such is the centre around which useful and exchangeable value
oscillate, the point where they are finally swallowed up and
disappear: such is the absolute, unchangeable law which regulates
economic disturbances and the freaks of industry and commerce,
and governs progress.
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