the general wealth.--Utility is the basis of value; labor fixes
the relation; the price is the expression which, barring the
fluctuations that we shall have to consider, indicates this
relation.

Such is the centre around which useful and exchangeable value
oscillate, the point where they are finally swallowed up and
disappear: such is the absolute, unchangeable law which regulates
economic disturbances and the freaks of industry and commerce,
and governs progress. Every effort of thinking and laboring
humanity, every individual and social speculation, as an
integrant part of collective wealth, obeys this law. It was the
destiny of political economy, by successively positing all its
contradictory terms, to make this law known; the object of social
economy, which I ask permission for a moment to distinguish from
political economy, although at bottom there is no difference
between them, will be to spread and apply it universally.

The theory of the measure or proportionality of values is, let it
be noticed, the theory of equality itself. Indeed, just as in
society, where we have seen that there is a complete identity
between producer and consumer, the revenue paid to an idler
is like value cast into the flames of Etna, so the laborer who
receives excessive wages is like a gleaner to whom should be
given a loaf of bread for gathering a stalk of grain: and all
that the economists have qualified as UNPRODUCTIVE CONSUMPTION
is in reality simply a violation of the law of proportionality.

We shall see in the sequence how, from these simple data, the
social genius gradually deduces the still obscure system of