Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/610

 594 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

within the industrial system is that of reciprocal gain and sacri- fice ; that consequently the economic object does not, as super- ficially appears, possess in its desirability an absolute element of value, but rather that this fact of being desired operates to give the object a value exclusively as being the foundation or the material of an actual or putative exchange.

Even in case we derive the valuation of objects from an absolute motive, namely, the labor expended upon them, and even if we assert that the value of goods is in mverse ratio to the productive capacity of the labor, yet we must still recognize the determination of the value of the objects as purely recipro- cal, instead of a derivative from a single absolute standard. This being admitted, there arises the following relationship : A pair of boots has at a given time the same value as twenty meters of shirting. If now, through a new arrangement, the total labor demanded for the boots falls to one-half, they are worth only ten meters of shirting. Suppose now the labor time demanded for shirting is reduced one-half by improved machin- ery ; the boots will then once more be the equivalent to twenty meters of shirting. If, again, the corresponding improvement affects all the laborers, and no goods are introduced which affect the relations between them, the two articles remain unchanged in their value as expressed in terms of each other. The change in the productive power of labor has an influence upon the value of the products only when it affects isolated portions of the economic organism, but not when it affects the organism as a whole. However we may exert ourselves, therefore, to express the value of the object through an absolute quantitative symbol, however qualified, it remains still only the relatio?i, in which the various wares participate in this vehicle of value, which deter- mines the value of each. Even under that presupposition, it is for the value of the separate objects as individuals wholly irrele- vant how much or how little labor is invested in them. Only in so far as it is a quantity of labor greater or less in comparison with the quantity of labor invested in another object does each of the two acquire an economically effective value. But for the same reason it is, on the other hand, also unwarranted to complain