Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/600

 S84 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

has cost labor. In so far there is not the slightest ground to give labor a special position as contrasted with all other conditions of value. The difference between these is only of a quantitative nature. Labor is the most frequent object of exchange. In this assertion we forbear to enter into the discussion whether labor or labor-power, and in what form, constitute an object of exchange. Because labor is regarded as a sacrifice, as some- thing painful, it is performed only when an object can be secured by it which corresponds to the eudaemonistic or some other demand. If labor were nothing but pleasure, the products that it wrings from nature would have no value whatever, provided we disregard the difference in abundance of objects. On the con- trary, if objects that satisfy our desires came to us of their own accord, labor would have no more value. Thus on the whole we may say that, considered from the standpoint of value, every economic transaction is an exchange, and every single article of value furnishes its additional quota to the total value of life only after deduction of a certain sacrificed quantum of value.

In all the foregoing it is presupposed that a definite scale of value exists in the case of the objects, and that each of the two objects concerned in the transaction signifies, for the one con- tracting party the desired gain, for the other the necessary sacri- fice. But this presumption is, as a matter of fact, much too simple. If, as is necessary, we regard economic activity as a special case of the universal life-form of exchange, as a sacrifice in return for a gain, we shall from the beginning suspect some- thing of what takes place within this form, namely, that the value of the gain is not, so to speak, brought with it, ready-made, but it accrues to the desired object, in part or even entirely, through the measure of the sacrifice demanded in acquiring it. These cases, which are as frequent as they are important for the theory of value, seem, to be sure, to harbor an essential contra- diction ; for they require us to make a sacrifice of value for things which in themselves are worthless. As a matter of course, no one would forego value without receiving for it at least equal value ; and, on the contrary, that the end should receive its value only through the price that we must give for it could be the case