Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/614

 598 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

present in them ; and, second, that a definite proportion between two values appears as a something that must be, with the empha- sis of a not merely objective, but also a moral demand. The conception, for example, that the essential value-element in all values is the labor time objectified m them is utilized in both these assumptions, and thus gives a direct or an indirect stand- ard which fixes the value independent of price, and makes the latter vibrate in changing plus and minus differences, as com- pared with the former. Now it is evident, to be sure, that if we from the start recognize only a single value-substance, only that price corresponds to the value so contained which contains pre- cisely an equivalent amount of that same value. According to this principle the value should be the first and fixed element ; the price should constitute a more or less adequate secondary ele- ment. But this consequence, supposing everything else is con- ceded, does not in fact follow. The fact of that single measure of value leaves entirely unexplained how labor-power comes to have value. It would hardly have occurred if the labor-power had not, by acting upon various materials and by creating vari- ous products, made the possibility of exchange; or unless the exercise of the power had been recognized as a sacrifice made for the gain of the object achieved by the sacrifice. Thus labor- power also comes into the value-category through the possibility and reality of exchange, quite unaffected by the circumstance that later labor-power may itself furnish a measure, within the value- category, for the other contents. If the labor-power is thus also the content of that value, it receives its form as value only through the fact that it enters into the relation of sacrifice and gain, or price and value (here in the narrower sense). In the cases of discrepancy between price and value, the one contracting party would, according to this theory, give a quantum of immediately realizable labor-power for a lesser quantum of the same. Yet other circumstances, not containing labor-power, are in such wise connected with this case that the party still completes the exchange; for example: the satisfaction of an economic need, ama- teurish fancy, fraud, monopoly, and similar circumstances. In the wider and subjective sense, therefore, the equivalence of