Labor "is worth" more or less, according as alimentary commodities are more or less dear, according as the supply and demand of "hands" exists in such or such a degree, &c., &c.
Labor is not a "vague thing"; it is always definitely determined labor, never labor in general, which is bought and sold. It is not only the labor which is qualitatively defined by the object, but it is also the object which is determined by the specific quality of the labor.
Labor, in so far as it is bought and sold, is itself a commodity. Why is it purchased? "In view of the values supposed to be potentially embodied in it." But if we say that a certain thing is a commodity there is no question of the object for which we buy it, it is simply for the service we intend to derive from it; the application which we shall make of it. It is a commodity as object of traffic. All the reasonings of M. Proudhon confine themselves to this: We do not purchase labor as an object of immediate consumption. No, we buy it as an instrument of production, as we would buy a machine. Merely as a commodity labor is worth nothing and produces nothing. M. Proudhon might just as well have said that there are no commodities in existence at all, seeing that every commodity is only acquired for some use and never merely as a commodity.
In measuring the value of commodities by labor M. Proudhon vaguely perceives the impossibility of expressing labor by this same measure, in so far as it has a value, labor commodity. He has a misgiving that it is to make of the minimum wage the natural and normal price of direct labor, that it is to accept the existing state of society. So, to escape from this fatal consequence he performs a volte-face and pretends that labor is not a commodity, that it could not have a value. He forgets
