II.—STORE-KEEPING.
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bought, nor sold. Everything else is bought and sold for Labour, but Labour itself cannot be bought nor sold for anything, being priceless.[1] The idea that it is a commodity to be bought or sold, is the alpha and omega of Politico-Economic fallacy.
60. This being the nature of labour, the "Cost" of anything is the quantity of labour necessary to obtain it;—the quantity for which, or at which, it "stands" (constat). It is literally the "Constancy" of the thing;—you shall win it—move it—come at it, for no less than this.
Cost is measured and measurable (using the accurate Latin terms) only in "labor," not in "opera." [2] It does not matter how much work
- ↑ The object of Political Economy is not to buy, nor to sell labour, but to spare it. Every attempt to buy or sell it is, in the outcome, ineffectual; so far as successful, it is not sale, but Betrayal; and the purchase-money is a part of that thirty pieces which bought, first the greatest of labours, and afterwards the burial-field of the Stranger; for this purchase-money, being in its very smallness or vileness the exactly measured opposite of the "vilis annona amicorum," makes all men strangers to each other.
- ↑ Cicero's distinction, "sordidi quæstus, quorum operæ, non quorum artes emuntur," admirable in principle, is inaccurate in expression, because Cicero did not practically
