14

ON REAL AND

crease ina kind of value called real, which has
no reference to any other commodity whatever *.

Apply to the position of this author the
rule recommended in the last chapter: in-
quire, when he speaks of value, value in what?
and all the possible truth on the subject appears
inits naked simplicity. The touch of this talis-
man will show, that the paradox above quoted,

* Unless it be to an imaginary commodity, to which, in
assertions of this kind, there seems to be a latent refer-
ence ; a commodity namely, always produced by the same
labour. It is no matter, on this theory, whether such a
commodity exists or mot. An object a is tried by this
ideal standard, and if it is found that it would have risen
in relation to it, had the standard existed, 4 is pronounced
to have risen in real value—so that any one in a jocular
mood might be tempted to define real value, ¢ value esti-
mated by a standard which has only an imaginary existence.”
Nor is the reference to such a standard always a merely
tacit or latent one. Mr. Ricardo assigns as a reason for
calling an alteration in wages a fall, that it would . appear
to be a fall if the value of labour were estimated in an hy-
pothetical standard of this kind.