Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/77

 serving as measure of saleable value, thus becomes the law of a continual depreciation of labor. We will say more. There will be depreciation, not only of the commodities put on the market, but also the instruments of production and of the whole manufacture. This fact Ricardo has already noted in saying: "In constantly increasing the facility of production we constantly reduce the value of the things previously produced."

Sismondi goes further. He sees in this "value constituted" by labor time the source of all the contradictions of modern commerce and industry. "Mercantile value," he says, "is always fixed, in the last analysis, by the quantity of labor necessary to procure the thing valued: it is not what it has actually cost, but what it will cost henceforth with perhaps perfect means; and this quantity, however difficult it may be to appreciate, is always established with fidelity by competition. It is on this basis that is calculated the demand of the seller and the offer of the purchaser. The first will perhaps affirm that the thing has cost him ten days' labor; but if the other recognises that he may henceforth accomplish it with eight days' labor, if competition carries the demonstration to the two contracting parties, it will be to eight days only that the value will be reduced, and that the market price will be established. The two contracting parties have indeed, it is true, the notion that the thing is useful, that it is desired, that without desire there would be no sale; but the fixation of price has no connection with utility." ("Études," &c., Vol. II., p. 267, Brussels edition.)

It is important to insist upon this point, that what determines value is not the time in which a thing has been produced, but the minimum time in which it is susceptible