. . . . . ? As if the price of all things was not the proportion
of things, and as if we could double a proportion, a relation, a
law! Finally, is it not because of the proprietary and abnormal
routine upheld by political economy that every one, in
commerce, industry, the arts, and the State, on the pretended
ground of services rendered to society, tends continually to
exaggerate his importance, and solicits rewards, subsidies, large
pensions, exorbitant fees: as if the reward of every service was
not determined necessarily by the sum of its expenses? Why do
not the economists, if they believe, as they appear to, that the
labor of each should leave an excess, use all their influence in
spreading this truth, so simple and so luminous: Each man's
labor can buy only the value which it contains, and this value is
proportional to the services of all other laborers?
But here a last consideration presents itself, which I will
explain in a few words.
J. B. Say, who of all the economists has insisted the most
strenuously upon the absolute indeterminability of value, is also
the one who has taken the most pains to refute that idea.
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