APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 123 



CCLXVI 



The notion that the value of a thing bears any 

 necessary relation to the amount of labour (average 

 or otherwise) bestowed upon it, is a fallacy which 

 needs no further refutation than it has already 

 received. The average amount of labour bestowed 

 upon warming-pans confers no value upon them 

 in the eyes of a Gold-Coast negro ; nor would an 

 Esquimaux give a slice of blubber for the most 

 elaborate of ice-machines. 



Who has ever imagined that wealth which, in the 

 hands of an employer, is capital, ceases to be capital 

 if it is in the hands of a labourer ? Suppose a work- 

 man to be paid thirty shillings on Saturday evening 

 for six days' labour, that thirty shillings comes out 

 of the employer's capital, and receives the name of 

 "wages" simply because it is exchanged for labour. 

 In the workman's pocket, as he goes home, it is a 

 part of his capital, in exactly the same sense as, half 

 an hour before, it was part of the employer's capital ; 

 he is a capitalist just as much as if he were a 

 Rothschild. 



I think it may be not too much to say that, of all 

 the political delusions which are current in this queer 

 world, the very stupidest are those which assume 



