Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/611

 THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 595

at absence of the necessary stability of value in the daily wage of labor — by which expression it is implied that the average return of a day's labor is a value-unity. That accusation is founded on the fact that the labor day constantly increases in productivity and power in exchange. Assuming, however, for the moment that labor is the one creator of value, the value of the time-unit of labor for the purpose of exchange of related goods is always the same ; although, absolutely considered, it has increased, and corresponds to a larger quantum of each separate product. Since the reciprocal relation of the goods has remained the same, the relation of the labor time to each is the same as to the others. It may, therefore, remain, for the purpose of reckoning their relative values, a constant term.

This relativity of value, in consequence of which the given things stimulating feeling and desire come to be values only in the reciprocity of the give-and-take process, appears to lead to the consequence that value is nothing but the price, and that between the two objects no differences of scale can exist. Con- sequently, the frequent falling away of the two from each other would refute the theory. Against that undeniable fact of vary- ing ratio our theory asserts, to be sure, that there would never have been such a thing as a value if the universal phenomenon which we call price had not emerged. That a thing is worth something in a purely economic sense means that it is worth something to me, that is, that I am ready to give something for it. What in the world can move us to go beyond that naive subjective enjoyment of the things themselves, and to credit to them that peculiar significance which we call their value ? This certainly cannot come from their scarcity in and of itself, for if this existed simply as a fact, and were not in some way or other modifiable by us, we would regard it as a natural, and, on account of the defective differentiations, perhaps entirely unrecognized, quality of the external cosmos. For, since it could not be other- wise, it would receive no emphasis beyond its inherent qualities. This valuation arises only from the fact that something must be paid for things: the patience of waiting, the effort of search, the application of labor-power, the abstinence from things otherwise