Principles Of Political Economy
- Автор: Mill John Stuart
- Год: 2022
- Язык: английский
- Год: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
- Жанр: Политика
Электронная книга - «Principles Of Political Economy». Краткое содержание книги:
Beside discussing descriptive issues such as which nations tended to benefit more in a system of trade based on comparative advantage (Mill's answer: those with more elastic demands for other countries' goods), the work also discussed normative issues such as ideal systems of political economy, critiquing proposed systems such as communism and socialism.
Along with A System of Logic, Principles of Political Economy established Mill's reputation as a leading public intellectual. Mill's sympathetic attitude in this work and in other essays toward contemporary socialism, particularly Fourierism, earned him esteem from the working class as one of their intellectual champions.
When a commodity is not only made by labor and capital, but can be made by them in indefinite quantity, this Necessary Value, the minimum with which the producers will be content, is also, if competition is free and active, the maximum which they can expect. If the value of a commodity is such that it repays the cost of production not only with the customary but with a higher rate of profit, capital rushes to share in this extra gain, and, by increasing the supply of the article, reduces its value. This is not a mere supposition or surmise, but a fact familiar to those conversant with commercial operations. Whenever a new line of business presents itself, offering a hope of unusual profits, and whenever any established trade or manufacture is believed to be yielding a greater profit than customary, there is sure to be in a short time so large a production or importation of the commodity as not only destroys the extra profit, but generally goes beyond the mark, and sinks the value as much too low as it had before been raised too high, until the over-supply is corrected by a total or partial suspension of further production. As already intimated,[212] these variations in the quantity produced do not presuppose or require that any person should change his employment. Those whose business is thriving, increase their produce by availing themselves more largely of their credit, while those who are not making the ordinary profit, restrict their operations, and (in manufacturing phrase) work short time. In this mode is surely and speedily effected the equalization, not of profits, perhaps, but of the expectations of profit, in different occupations.
As a general rule, then, things tend to exchange for one another at such values as will enable each producer to be repaid the cost of production with the ordinary profit; in other words, such as will give to all producers the same rate of profit on their outlay. But in order that the profit may be equal where the outlay, that is, the cost of production, is equal, things must on the average exchange for one another in the ratio of their cost of production; things of which the cost of production is the same, must be of the same value.
Mr. Mill has here used cost of production almost exactly in the sense of cost of labor, and as excluding profit (while in the next chapter he includes some part of profit in the analysis). It will be well, for the sake of definiteness, to collect the phrases above in which he describes cost of production: “Unless that value is sufficient to repay the cost of production, and to afford, besides, the ordinary expectation of profit, the commodity will not continue to be produced”; “the cost of production, together with the ordinary profit, may therefore be called the necessary price, or value”; “it repays the cost of production, not only with the customary, but with a higher rate of profit”; “the cost of production with the ordinary profit—in other words, such as will give to all producers the same rate of profit on their outlay”; “that the profit may be equal where the outlay, that is, the cost of production, is equal.” This is a view which distinctly uses cost of production in the sense of the outlay to the capitalist, or cost of labor. In no other way can profit vary with “cost of production” than in the sense that it is what a given article “costs to the capitalist”; but that is Mr. Mill's definition of cost of labor (p. 227). It is, however, very puzzling when in the next section he speaks of “the natural value, that is, the cost of production.” Above, value included cost of production and profit also. Having thus pointed out what is Mr. Mill's conception of cost of production, it will remain for us in the next chapter to consider whether any other view of it is more satisfactory.
Adam Smith and Ricardo have called that value of a thing which is proportional to its cost of production, its Natural Value (or its Natural Price). They meant by this, the point about which the value oscillates, and to which it always tends to return; the center value, toward which, as Adam Smith expresses it, the market value of a thing is constantly gravitating; and any deviation from which is but a temporary irregularity which, the moment it exists, sets forces in motion tending to correct it. On an average of years sufficient to enable the oscillations on one side of the central line to be compensated by those on the other, the market value agrees with the natural value; but it very seldom coincides exactly with it at any particular time. The sea everywhere tends to a level, but it never is at an exact level; its surface is always ruffled by waves, and often agitated by storms. It is enough that no point, at least in the open sea, is permanently higher than another. Each place is alternately elevated and depressed; but the ocean preserves its level.
§ 6. The Value of these Commodities confirm, in the long run, to their Cost of Production through the operation of Demand and Supply.
The latent influence by which the values of things are made to conform in the long run to the cost of production is the variation that would otherwise take place in the supply of the commodity. The supply would be increased if the thing continued to sell above the ratio of its cost of production, and would be diminished if it fell below that ratio.
If one dollar covers the expense of making one spade, then when a spade, by virtue of a sudden demand, rises in value to one dollar and ten cents, the manufacturers get an extra profit of ten cents. This could not long remain so, because other capital would enter this industry, and so increase the supply that one spade would sell for only one dollar; then all would receive the average profit. If, owing to a cessation of demand for spades, the price fell to ninety cents, then the manufacturers would lose ten cents on each one made and sold. Thereupon they would cease to do a losing business, capital would be withdrawn, and spades would not be made until the supply was suited to the necessary expense of making them (one dollar). In this way, whenever there is a departure of the value from the normal cost, there is set in motion ipso facto a series of forces which automatically restores the value to that cost. So here again we see the nature of an economic law: the value may not often correspond exactly with cost of production, but there is a tendency in all values to conform to that cost, and this tendency they irresistibly obey. A body possessing weight does not move downward under all circumstances (stones may be thrown upward), but the law of gravitation holds true, nevertheless.
There is no need that there should be any actual alteration of supply; and when there is, the alteration, if permanent, is not the cause but the consequence of the alteration in value. If, indeed, the supply could not be increased, no diminution in the cost of production would lower the value; but there is by no means any necessity that it should. The mere possibility often suffices; the dealers are aware of what would happen, and their mutual competition makes them anticipate the result by lowering the price.
212
Supra, p. 222.