Book I: Chapter 5

CHAPTER V.

OF THE REAL AND NOMINAL PRICE OF COMMODITIES, OR OF THEIR PRICE IN
LABOUR, AND THEIR PRICE IN MONEY.

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.

Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power. But the person who either acquires, or
succeeds to a great fortune, does not necessarily acquire or succeed to any
political power, either civil or military. His fortune may, perhaps, afford
him the means of acquiring both; but the mere possession of that fortune
does not necessarily convey to him either. The power which that possession
immediately and directly conveys to him, is the power of purchasing a
certain command over all the labour, or over all the produce of labour which
is then in the market. His fortune is greater or less, precisely in
proportion to the extent of this power, or to the quantity either of other
men's labour, or, what is the same thing, of the produce of other men's