its services approximate to those of natural forces. But the production of machinery by machinery lessens its value relatively to its extension and efficacy.
An analysis and comparison of the prices of commodities produced by handicrafts or manufacturers, and of the prices of the same commodities produced by machinery, shows generally that, in the product of machinery, the value due to the instruments of labour, increases relatively, but decreases absolutely. In other words, its absolute amount decreases, but its amount, relatively to the total value of the product, of a pound of yarn, for instance, increases.[1]
It is evident that whenever it costs as much labour to produce a machine as is saved by the employment of that machine, there is nothing but a transposition of labour; consequently the total labour required to produce a commodity is not lessened or the productiveness of labour is not increased. It is clear, however, that the difference between the labour a machine costs, and the labour it saves, in other words, that the degree of its productiveness does not depend on the difference between its own value and the value of the implement it replaces. As long as the labour spent on a machine, and consequently the portion of its value added to the product, remains
- ↑ This portion of value which is added by the machinery, decreases both absolutely and relatively, when the machinery does away with horses and other animals that are employed as mere moving forces, and not as machines for changing the form of matter. It may here be incidentally observed, that Descartes, in defining animals as mere machines, saw with eyes of the mannfacturing period, while to eyes of the middle ages, animals were assistants to man, as they were later to Von Haller in his “Restauration der Staatswissenschaften.”’ That Descartes, like Bacon, anticipated an alteration in the form of production, and the practical subjugation of Nature by Man, as a result of the altered methods of thought, is plain from his “Discours de la Méthode.” He there says: “Il est possible (by the methods he introduced in philosophy) de parvenir à des connaissances fort utiles à la vie, et qu’au lieu de cette philosophie spéculative qu’on enseigne dans les écoles, on en peut tronver une pratique, par laquelle, connaissant la force et les actions du feu, de l'eau, de l’air, des astres, et de tous les autres corps qui nous environment, aussi distinctement que nous connatissons les divers métiers de nous artisans, nous les pourrious employer en mème façon à tous les usages auxquels ils sont propres, et ainsi nous rendre comme maitres et possesseurs de la nature” and thus “contribuer au perfectionnement de la vie humaine.” In the preface to Sir Dudley North’s “Discourses upon Trade” (1691) it is stated, that Descartes’ method had begun to free political economy from the old fables and superstitious notions of gold, trade, &c. On the whole, however, the early English economists sided with Bacon and Hobbes as their philosophers; while, at a later period, the philosopher κατ’ ἐξοχήν of political economy in England, France, and Italy, was Locke.
