Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/69

Rh to raise twenty bushels of corn, then two ounces of silver will be worth no more than the same labor of raising one bushel of corn, and that bushel of corn will be as cheap at two ounces, as it was before at one, ceteris paribus. Thus the riches of a country are to be valued by the quantity of labor its inhabitants are able to purchase." Thus Franklin regards labor-time from the one-sided economic point of view, as the measure of value. The transformation of actual products into exchange values is self-evident with him and the only question is as to finding a quantitative measure of value. "Trade," says he, "in general being nothing else but the exchange of labour for labour, the value of all things is, as I have said before, most justly measured by labour." Substitute the word "work" for "labor" in the above statement, and the confusion of labor in one form and labor in another form becomes at once apparent. Since trade consists e. g. in the exchange of the respective labors of the shoemaker, miner, spinner, painter, etc., does it follow that the value of shoes is most justly measured by the work of a painter? On the contrary, Franklin meant that the value of shoes, mining products, yarn, paintings, etc., is determined by abstract labor which possesses no particular qualities and can, therefore, be measured only quantitatively. But since he does not develop the idea that labor contained in exchange value is abstract