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.
This is again a clear recognition of the influence of Mr. Cairnes's theory of “non-competing groups.”[215]
Wages do enter into value. The relative wages of the labor necessary for producing different commodities affect their value just as much as the relative quantities of labor. It is true, the absolute wages paid have no effect upon values; but neither has the absolute quantity of labor. If that were to vary simultaneously and equally in all commodities, values would not be affected. If, for instance, the general efficiency of all labor were increased, so that all things without exception could be produced in the same quantity as before with a smaller amount of labor, no trace of this general diminution of cost of production would show itself in the values of commodities.
§ 3. Profits an element in Cost of Production.
Thus far of labor or wages as an element in cost of production. But in our analysis, in the First Book, of the requisites of production, we found that there is another necessary element in it besides labor. There is also capital; and this being the result of abstinence, the produce, or its value, must be sufficient to remunerate, not only all the labor required, but the abstinence of all the persons by whom the remuneration of the different classes of laborers was advanced. The return from abstinence is Profit. And profit, we have also seen, is not exclusively the surplus remaining to the capitalist after he has been compensated for his outlay, but forms, in most cases, no unimportant part of the outlay itself. The flax-spinner, part of whose expenses consists of the purchase of flax and of machinery, has had to pay, in their price, not only the wages of the labor by which the flax was grown and the machinery made, but the profits of the grower, the flax-dresser, the miner, the iron-founder, and the machine-maker. All these profits, together with those of the spinner himself, were again advanced by the weaver, in the price of his material—linen yarn; and along with them the profits of a fresh set of machine-makers, and of the miners and iron-workers who supplied them with their metallic material. All these advances form part of the cost of production of linen. Profits, therefore, as well as wages, enter into the cost of production which determines the value of the produce.
§ 4. Cost of Production properly represented by sacrifice, or cost, to the Laborer as well as to the Capitalist; the relation of this conception to the Cost of Labor.
In discussing Cost of Labor (supra, pp. 225, 226), Mr. Mill found that the advances of the immediate producer consisted not only of wages, but also of tools, materials, etc., in the price of which he was including the profits of an auxiliary capitalist who advanced the capital for making these tools, etc. But, then, if a line of division were to be passed down through all these advances, separating wages from profits, he urged that, if all the capitalists (auxiliary and immediate both) were one, all the advances of the capitalist might be considered as wages. Profits did not form a part of the outlay to the capitalists in the former analysis. And this seems correct enough. Now, however, he suggests that the outlay of the immediate producers should include the profit of the auxiliary capitalist. More than this, Mr. Mill now includes in cost to the capitalist the profit of the immediate capitalist. For example, in his illustration of the manufacture of linen, he includes not merely the profit of the auxiliary capital engaged in spinning and weaving, but the profit of the immediate and last capitalist, the linen-manufacturer, also. This includes in the cost of producing an article a profit not realized until after the commodity is produced.
It is now time to give a more correct idea of cost of production. Every one admits, for example, that the “cost of production” of wheat is less in the United States than in England. If, for instance, three men with a capital of one hundred dollars may on a plot of ground, A, in the United States produce one hundred bushels of wheat, it will happen that the same men and capital will only produce sixty bushels on ground, B, in England.
In ordinary language, then, we say that the cost of production is greater in England than in the United States, because the same labor and capital here produce one hundred bushels for sixty in England; or, what amounts to the same thing, that less labor and capital could produce sixty bushels in the United States than sixty bushels in England. If we suppose that one fourth of the crop is profit, and three fourths is assigned to wages in both countries, then in the United States the one hundred dollars of capital receives twenty-five bushels of profit, while in England it receives only fifteen; and the three men receive as wages in the United States twenty-five bushels each, while in England they receive only fifteen bushels each. The first important induction to be made is that where cost of production is low, wages and profits are high. The high productiveness of extractive industries in the United States is the reason why wages and profits are higher here than in older countries.
Now the second important question is, Is cost of production made up of wages and profits, and is it true that the cost rises with a rise of wages and profits? Certainly not. Wages and profits are both higher in the United States than in England, but no one is so absurd as to say that the cost of production of wheat (as above explained) is higher here than there. It is exactly because cost of production of wheat is lower in the United States that wages and profits measured in wheat are higher here than in England. Therefore, it can not be granted, as Mr. Mill expounds the doctrine, that cost of production is made up of wages and profits. When we speak of an increased cost of production of a given article, we mean that its production requires more labor and capital than before; and of a decrease in cost of production, that it requires less labor and capital than before; meaning by “more labor” that a given quality of labor is exerted for a longer or shorter time, and by “more capital” that a greater or less quantity of wealth abstained from is employed for a longer or shorter time; or, in other words, that laborers and capitalists undergo more or less sacrifice in exertion and abstinence, respectively, to attain a given result. This is the contribution to cost of production made by Mr. Cairnes, and briefly defined as follows: “In the case of labor, the cost of producing a given commodity will be represented by the number of average laborers employed in its production—regard at the same time being had to the severity of the work and the degree of risk it involves—multiplied by the duration of their labors. In that of abstinence, the principle is analogous; the sacrifice will be measured by the quantity of wealth abstained from, taken in connection with the risk incurred, and multiplied by the duration of the abstinence.”[216]
This view of cost of production takes into consideration, in the act of production, what Mr. Mill does not include, the cost, or real sacrifice, to the laborer as well as to the capitalist. It may, then, be well to state the relations of cost of production, taken in this better sense, to value.
215
See supra, p. 210.
216
“Leading Principles,” part i, chap. iii, p. 87.