phenomenon of depreciation and enrichment is manifested under a
thousand forms and by a thousand combinations; it is the essence
of the passional and intriguing game of commerce and industry.
And this is the lottery, full of traps, which the economists
think ought to last forever, and whose suppression the Academy of
Moral and Political Sciences unwittingly demands, when, under the
names of profit and wages, it asks us to reconcile value in use
and value in exchange; that is, to find the method of rendering
all useful values equally exchangeable, and, vice versa, all
exchangeable values equally useful.

The economists have very clearly shown the double character of
value, but what they have not made equally plain is its
contradictory nature. Here begins our criticism.

Utility is the necessary condition of exchange; but take away
exchange, and utility vanishes: these two things are indissolubly
connected. Where, then, is the contradiction?

Since all of us live only by labor and exchange, and grow richer
as production and exchange increase, each of us produces as much
useful value as possible, in order to increase by that amount his
exchanges, and consequently his enjoyments. Well, the first
effect, the inevitable effect, of the multiplication of values is
to LOWER them: the more abundant is an article of merchandise,
the more it loses in exchange and depreciates commercially. Is
it not true that there is a contradiction between the necessity
of labor and its results?

I adjure the reader, before rushing ahead for the explanation, to