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less we were prepared to assert that the value of commodities is determined solely by the labour employed upon them, not only when the rate of profits is the same but when it is totally different;[1] a proposition which no one can venture to assert in the case of foreign commodities, and which there is as little reason to assert in comparing the commodities of distant periods.
If profits were 50 per cent, five hundred years ago, and are 10 per cent, now, the question is, whether a piece of cloth which had cost the same quantity of labour at these different periods would be of the same value. By the supposition it was composed of a greater quantity of profits in the earlier period, and having cost the same quantity of labour, we should naturally conclude that it would be of a higher value.
It is said, however, that, although it cost the same quantity of labour, yet that the labour in the former period was of much less value,
- ↑ Whenever it is said that the value of labour rises in the progress of cultivation, a comparison is made between the value of a given quantity of labour at two different periods; and when it is added that wages rise in proportion to the quantity of labour required to produce them, objects are measured solely by the quantity of labour employed upon them, although the rate of profits may be totally different.
