Notes on Ricardo’s Principles (12) – 価値 11
Section IV
機械、固定資本が相対価値に与える影響
リカードは、機械、固定・耐久性資本の商品の価値、商品間の相対価値への影響について述べる。
「商品の生産に投入される労働量が相対価値を規定するとの原則は機械、資本の使用によって大きく修正を受ける」
The principle that the quantity of labor bestowed on the production of commodities regulates their relative value considerably modified by the employment of machinery and other fixed and durable capital.
「道具、備品、建物、機械の耐久性は様々。要求される労働も異なってくる。労働をサポートする資本と、道具、備品、建物、機械に投下される資本の比率には様々な組み合わせがある。商品生産のための労働投入量の多寡だけでなく、資本設備の耐久性の程度、2種の資本の組み合わせの比率の様々は、相対価値に変化を与える。」
In the former section we have supposed the implements and weapons necessary to kill the deer and salmon to be equally durable, and to be the result of the same quantity of labor, and we have seen that the variations in the relative value of deer and salmon depended solely on the varying quantities of labor necessary to obtain them, but in every state of society, the tools, implements, buildings, and machinery employed in different trades may be of various degrees of durability, and may require different portions of labor to produce them. The proportions, too, in which the capital that is to support labor, and the capital that is invested in tools, machinery, and buildings, may be variously combined. This difference in the degree of durability of fixed capital, and this variety in the proportions in which the two sorts of capital may be combined, introduce another cause, besides the greater or less quantity of labor necessary to produce commodities, for the variations in their relative value – this cause is the rise or fall in the value of labor.
資本の耐久性が価値に影響を与える
機械、資本の耐久性には様々のものがあり、その程度が商品の相対価値に影響を与えることを述べる。
「労働者に消費される食料、衣料、建物、備品等は皆、減耗する性質がある。しかし、その耐久性は様々である。」
The food and clothing consumed by the laborer, the buildings in which he works, the implements with which his labor is assisted, are all of a perishable nature. There is, however, a vast difference in the time for which these different capitals will endure: a steam-engine will last longer than a ship, a ship than the clothing of the laborer, and the clothing of the laborer longer than the food which he consumes.
流動資本と固定資本
リカードは、資本の耐久性、使用期間によって、流動資本と固定資本に分ける。
「資本の減耗、再投資、消費の期間によって、流動資本か、固定資本かに分けられる。」
According as capital is rapidly perishable, and requires to be frequently reproduced, or is of slow consumption, it is classed under the heads of circulating or of fixed capital. A brewer whose buildings and machinery are valuable and durable is said to employ a large portion of fixed capital: on the contrary, a shoemaker, whose capital is chiefly employed in the payment of wages, which are expended on food and clothing, commodities more perishable than buildings and machinery, is said to employ a large proportion of his capital as circulating capital.
「流動資本は、様々な期間で回転され、回収される。農夫に蒔かれるために購入される小麦は、パン屋が食パンをつくるために購入される小麦に比べ相対的に固定資本である。」
It is also to be observed that the circulating capital may circulate, or be returned to its employer, in very unequal times. The wheat bought by a farmer to sow is comparatively a fixed capital to the wheat purchased by a baker to make into loaves. One leaves it in the ground and can obtain no return for a year; the other can get it ground into flour, sell it as bread to his customer, and have his capital free to renew the same or commerce any other employment in a week.
(2015.8)
