This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 Excerpt: ...is even capable of measure. If we set Brown, Smith, and Jones to work, first separately and then together, the difference in value between their added and their joint product might rank as the quantity of social value. This supposed case is not, of course, really accurate, for it supposes Brown by himself could produce something of value. We have already seen that, even supposing an individual could produce something of use to himself, he could not produce something of "value" in an economic sense. In a thousand different subtle ways society works in and with Brown. Let him be no longer boat-maker, but solitary shoemaker. The value of the pair of shoes which he "produces," working by himself, is just as much determined by society as the land-values of our farmer, as soon as they begin to emerge. The skill and knowledge of his craft is an elaborate social product, and is taught him by society; the same society protects him while he works, assists him by an elaborate organization of markets to get leather, tools, thread, and a work-place, provides him with a market in the form of persons who have evolved the need of wearing boots, and the industrial arts whereby to pay for them, and so forth. The value of the boots when made will obviously depend, to an indefinite extent, upon the innumerable factors which affect the supply and demand of all other products, along with which boots figure in processes of exchange. It is needless to labour further the proof that society co-operates with individuals in producing the value which attaches to material goods. The same conditions hold of non-material goods, which can be said to have either a use value or an economic value. The maker of a poem or play, or other non-material work of art, is in no sen...
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