EVERY MAN IS RICH OR POOR according to the degree in which he
can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniencies, and amusements
of human life. But after the division of labour has once thoroughly
taken place, it is but a very small part of these with which a man’s
own labour can supply him. The far greater part of them he must
derive from the labour of other people, and he must be rich or
poor according to the quantity of that labour which he can command, or which he can afford to purchase. The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means
not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other
commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables
him to purchase or command. Labour therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.
The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the
man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring
it. What every thing is really worth to the man who has acquired
it and who wants to dispose of it, or exchange it for something
else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which
it can impose upon other people. What is bought with money, or
with goods, is purchased by labour, as much as what we acquire
by the toil of our own body. That money, or those goods, indeed,
save us this toil. They contain the value of a certain quantity of
labour, which we exchange for what is supposed at the time to
contain the value of an equal quantity. Labour was the first price,
the original purchase money that was paid for all things. It was
not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the
world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is
precisely equal to the quantity of’ labour which it can enable them
to purchase or command.
