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one-twentieth, or £100, and the labour employed on cheap materials and in the working of the machinery were worth £200, while profits were 20 per cent, then the value of the labour worked up in the commodity would be £100 added to £200, equal to £300; and the whole capital advanced being £2,300, the profits upon it would be £460, which, added to £300 would make the whole value of the produce £760. Compared with a commodity of equal value which had been produced without fixed capital, and had yet been brought to market in the same time and with the same rate of profits, it would contain less than half of the labour worked up in it; while, if profits were to fall from 20 per cent, to 10 per cent, the value of the commodity would fall in the proportion of from £760 to £530, or, if profits had been 10 per cent, and were to rise to 20 per cent, the value of the commodity would rise in the proportion of from £530 to £760, or above 42 per cent., without any change in the quantity of labour employed. [1]
- ↑ The effects of slow or quick returns, and of the different proportions of fixed and circulating capitals, are distinctly allowed by Mr. Ricardo; but in his last edition, (the third, p. 32.) he has much underrated their amount. They are both theoretically and practically so considerable as entirely to destroy the position that commodities exchange with each other according to
