in so far as the latter consists of exchange values. Similarly, it is a tautology to say that matter in its natural state has no exchange value,[1] because it does not contain any labor, and that exchange value as such does not contain matter. But when William Petty calls "labor the father and earth the mother of wealth," or when Bishop Berkeley asks "whether the four elements and man's labour therein, be not the true source of wealth,"[2] or when the American, Thomas Cooper puts it popularly: "Take away from a piece of bread the labour bestowed by the baker on the flour, by the miller on the grain brought to him, by the farmer in ploughing, sowing, tending, gathering, threshing, cleaning and transporting the seed, and what will remain? A few grains of grass, growing wild in the woods, and unfit for any human purpose"[3]—then all these views do not refer to abstract labor as the source of exchange value, but to concrete labor as the source of material wealth; in short, to labor in so far as it produces use-values. In assuming that a commodity has use-value we assume the special usefulness and distinct fitness of the labor absorbed by it, but that is all there is to the view of labor as useful labor from the standpoint of commodity. Considering bread as a use-value, we are interested in its properties as an article of food and not at all in the different kinds of labor of the farmer, miller, baker, etc. If by some
- ↑ "In its natural state, matter . . . is always destitute of value." McCulloch, "A Discourse on the Rise, Progress, Peculiar Objects, and Importance of Political Economy," 2nd edition, Edinburgh, 1825, p. 48. It is evident how high even a McCulloch stands above the fetishism of German "thinkers," who declare "matter" and half a dozen other foreign things to be elements of value. Cf. e. g. L. Stein, l. c. v. I, p. 110.
- ↑ Berkeley, The Querist, London, 1750.
- ↑ Thomas Cooper, Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy, London, 1831, p. 99.
