OF VALUE.

201

Cost of production may be, therefore, either a
quantity of labour or a quantity of capital.
What the labourer produces without capital,
costs him his labour; what the capitalist pro-
duces costs him his capital.

Such appears to be the simplest view of the
subject; but it is contended, that as the value
of the capital itself has been caused by labour,
it is more accurate to say, that cost of produc-
tion consists in the quantity of labour. It must
be recollected, however, that we are inquiring
into the circumstances which determine men
to give a certain quantity of one commodity for
a certain quantity of another; and what really
acts upon the minds of two capitalists in
exchanging their respective goods, is not the
labour which in a thousand different ways has
been expended upon the articles constituting
the capital employed, but the amount of capital
which they have parted with, in order to ob-
tain the commodity produced. So that granting
for the present that the value of capital may be
resolved (to use the common language on this