It is here,Sir,that you ground your objections.--If productions increase,you say,or wants diminish,the productions will fall to too low a price to pay for the labour necessary to their production.(12)Before I reply to you,Sir,I inform you that,if out of politeness I make use of your word labour,which,according to the explanation given in my preceding letter,is incomplete,I shall comprise under that term,not only the productive service of a workman and his master,but also the productive services rendered by the capital and the land,services which have their 'price,as well as personal labor,and so real a price that the capitalist and the landholder live upon it.
This point being understood,I reply,in the first place,that productions by diminishing in price do not disenable the producers to purchase the labor which has created them,or any other equivalent labor.In our hypothesis the producers of corn,by a more skilful process,will produce a double quantity of corn,and the producers of cloth a double quantity of cloth,and the corn as well as the cloth will be diminished one half,in price.
What does this mean?The producers of corn will have two sacks for their services,which together will be worth what a single sack was worth,and the producers of cloth will have two pieces,which together will be worth what one was worth.In the exchange called production the same services will have obtained,each in their place,a double quantity of production,but these two double quantities may be obtained one by the other as heretofore,and as easily so,that without laying out more in productive services,a nation in which this productive power begins to unfold itself,will have double the quantity of articles to consume,either wheat,or cloth,or any thing else,since we have agreed to represent by wheat and cloth every thing the human species may want for its support.The productions in such an exchange are opposed in value to productive services.Now,as in every exchange one of the two articles is of greater value,in proportion to the quantity it obtains of the other,it follows,that productive services are the more valuable in proportion as productions are multiplied,and at lower price.(13)This is the reason why the diminution in the price of productions,by augmenting the value of the productive funds of a nation,and the revenues resulting therefrom,increases the national wealth.This demonstration,which is detailed in the 3rd Chapter of the 2d.Book of my Treatise on Political Economy (4th edition),has I think rendered some service to the science by explaining that which up to that period had been felt but not explained.Which is,that although wealth is a changeable value,general wealth has accrued by the low price of commodities and every kind of production.(14)Never perhaps has an increase of double in the productive power of labor taken place all at once,and in all productions at the same time,but it is indisputable that it has taken place gradually in many productions,and in very varied proportions.A purple cloak amongst the ancients,of the same quality and size,of the same solidity and beauty of color,cost no doubt double what it costs now.And I have no doubt that wheat,paid in labor,is diminished one half at least since the unknown epocha of the invention of the plough.All these productions costing less labor,have been,in consequence of competition,given for what they cost,without any one being a loser by it,and all the world has gained in revenue.
But we must return to the first part of your objection.The producers of wheat and the producers of cloth will then produce more wheat and cloth than either the one or the other can consume .Ah!Sir,after having proved that notwithstanding a reduction of more than half the value of the productions the same labor could buy the whole of them,and thereby procure double the means of existence and enjoyment,shall I be reduced to the necessity of proving to the justly celebrated author of the Essay on Population that everything that can be produced may find consumers,and that amongst the enjoyments which the quantity of productions of which mankind can dispose,procure,the comforts of home and the increase of children are not the least?After having written three justly admired volumes to prove that the population always rises to the level of the means of existence,can you admit the case of a great increase of productions,with a stationary number of consumers,and wants reduced by parsimony ?
(page 355.)
Either the Author of the Essay on Population or the author of the Principles of Political Economy must be wrong.But every thing proves to us that it is not the author of the Essay on Population who is wrong.Experience as well as reason shows that a production,a thing necessary or agreeable to man,is only despised when one has not the means of buying it.These means of buying it are precisely what establish the demand for the production,which set a price to it.Not to want a useful thing is not to have wherewith to pay for it.And how is it we have not wherewith to pay for it?It is because we are deprived of that which constitutes wealth,deprived of either industry,land,or capital.
When men are once provided with the means of producing,they appropriate their productions to their wants,for the production itself is an exchange in which the productive means are supplied,and in which the article we most want is demanded in return.To create a thing,the want of which does not exist,is to create a thing without value:this would not be production.
Now from the moment it has a value,the producer can find means to exchange it for those articles he wants.
This power of exchange,peculiar to man amongst all the animals,appropriates all productions to all wants,and allows him to calculate for his existence not on the species of production (he will exchange it as soon as he likes if it has a value but on the value.
