For I entreat the economists to question themselves for a moment
in the silence of their hearts, far from the prejudices which
disturb them, and regardless of the employments which occupy them
or which they wait for, of the interests which they serve, of the
votes which they covet, of the distinctions which tickle their
vanity: let them tell me whether, hitherto, they have viewed the
principle that all labor should leave an excess in connection
with this series of premises and conclusions which we have
elaborated, and whether they ever have understood these words to
mean anything more than the right to speculate in values by
manipulating supply and demand; whether it is not true that they
affirm at once, on the one hand the progress of wealth and
well-being, and consequently the measure of values, and on the
other the arbitrariness of commercial transactions and the
incommensurability of values,--the flattest of contradictions?
Is it not because of this contradiction that we continually hear
repeated in lectures, and read in the works on political economy,
this absurd hypothesis: If THE PRICE OF ALL THINGS WAS DOUBLED.
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