Episode 15

This polemic against money is,on the one hand,connected with definite historical conditions,for Boisguillebert fights against the blindly destructive greed for gold which possessed the court of Louis XIV,his tax-farmers and the aristocracy;[3]whereas Petty acclaims the greed for gold as a vigorous force which spurs a nation to industrial progress and to the conquest of the world market;at the same time however it throws into bold relief more profound fundamental differences which recur as a perpetual contrast between typically English and typically French [4]political economy.Boisguillebert,indeed,sees only the material substance of wealth,its use-value,enjoyment of it,[5]and regards the bourgeois form of labour,the production of use-values as commodities and the exchange of commodities,as the appropriate social form in which individual labour accomplishes this object.Where,as in money,he encounters the specific features of bourgeois wealth,he therefore speaks of the intrusion of usurping alien factors,and inveighs against one of the forms of labour in bourgeois society,while simultaneously pronouncing utopian eulogies on it in another form.[6]Boisguillebert's work proves that it is possible to regard labour-time as the measure of the value of commodities,while confusing the labour which is materialised in the exchange-value of commodities and measured in time units with the direct physical activity of individuals.

It is a man of the New World --where bourgeois relations of production imported together with their representatives sprouted rapidly in a soil in which the superabundance of humus made up for the lack of historical tradition --who for the first time deliberately and clearly (so clearly as to be almost trite)reduces exchange-value to labour-time.This man was Benjamin Franklin ,who formulated the basic law of modern political economy in an early work,which was written in 1729and published in 1731.[7]He declares it necessary to seek another measure of value than the precious metals,and that this measure is labour.

"By labour may the value of silver be measured as well as other things.

As,suppose one man is employed to raise corn,while another is digging and refining silver;at the year's end,or at any other period of time,the complete produce of corn,and that of silver,are the natural price of each other;and if one be twenty bushels,and the other twenty ounces,then an ounce of that silver is worth the labour of raising a bushel of that corn.Now if by the discovery of some nearer,more easy or plentiful mines,a man may get forty ounces of silver as easily as formerly he did twenty,and the same labour is still required to raise twenty bushels of corn,then two ounces of silver will be worth no more than the same labour of raising one bushel of corn,and that bushel of corn will be as cheap at two ounces,as it was before at one,caeteris paribus .Thus the riches of a country are to be valued by the quantity of labour its inhabitants are able to purchase"(op.cit.,p.265).

From the outset Franklin regards labour-time from a restricted economic standpoint as the measure of value.The transformation of actual products into exchange-values is taken for granted,and it is therefore only a question of discovering a measure of their value.

To quote Franklin again:"Trade in general being nothing else but the exchange of labour for labour,the value of all things is,as I have said before,most justly measured by labour"(op.cit.,p.267).

If in this sentence the term labour is replaced by concrete labour,it is at once obvious that labour in one form is being confused with labour in another form.Because trade may,for example,consist in the exchange of the labour of a shoemaker,miner,spinner,painter and so on,is therefore the labour of the painter the best measure of the value of shoes?Franklin,on the contrary,considers that the value of shoes,minerals,yarn,paintings,etc.,is determined by abstract labour which has no particular quality and can thus be measured only in terms of quantity.[8]But since he does not explain that the labour contained in exchange value is abstract universal social labour,which is brought about by the universal alienation of individual labour,he is bound to mistake money for the direct embodiment of this alienated labour.He therefore fails to see the intrinsic connection between money and labour which posits exchange-value,but on the contrary regards money as a convenient technical device which has been introduced into the sphere of exchange from outside.[9]Franklin's analysis of exchange-value had no direct influence on the general course of the science,because he dealt only with special problems of political economy for definite practical purposes.