act. He was not thinking of actual Choctaws or Cherokees. The beaver
was exchanged for the deer about the time when the primitive man
signed the 'social contract.' He is a hypothetical person used for
purposes of illustration and simplification. Ricardo is not really
dealing with the question of origins; but he is not the less implying
a theory of structure. It did not matter that the 'social contract'
was historically a figment; it would serve equally well to explain
government. It did not matter that actual savages may have exchanged
beavers and deer by the help of clubs instead of competition in the
market. The industrial fabric is what would have been had it been thus
built up. It can be constructed from base to summit by the application
of his formula. As in the imaginary state of deer and beaver, we have
a number of independent persons making their bargains upon this
principle of the equivalence of labour; and that principle is supposed
to be carried out so that the most remote processes of the industrial
machinery can be analysed into results of this principle. This gives a
sufficient clue to the whole labyrinth of modern industry, and there
is no need of considering the extinct forms of social structure, which
we know to have existed, and under which the whole system of
distribution took place under entirely different conditions.[333] A
great change has taken place since the time of the deer and beaver:
the capitalist has been developed, and has become the motive power.
The labourer's part is passive; and the 'value' is fixed by the
bargaining between the proprietors of 'accumulated labour,' forced by
competition to make equal profits, instead of being fixed by the
equitable bargain between the two hunters exchanging the products of
their individual labour. Essentially, however, the principle is the
same. In the last as in the first stage of society, things are
exchanged in proportion to the labour necessary to produce them. Now
it is plain enough that such a doctrine cannot lead to a complete
solution of the problem of distribution. It would be a palpably
inadequate account of historical processes which have determined the
actual relation of classes. The industrial mechanism has been
developed as a part of the whole social evolution; and, however
important the economic forces, they have been inextricably blended
with all the other forces by which a society is built up. For the same
reason, Ricardo's theorem woul