CHAPTER VI ARISTOTLE

Of course, the bald theory that, in exchange, one necessarily loses what the other gains, is untenable. Yet there is still something to be said for Aristotle. He recognized, as well as Menger, that exchange, as pursued by the retailers, did not square with his idea of just price. This is the very reason why he objects to retail trade. He is presenting exchange, not as it is, but as he believes it should be pursued. His doctrine, in a nutshell, is that the primary purpose of exchange is profit, defined as economic satisfaction of mutual needs, not profit in dollars and cents. The equality that he seeks, too, is not so much an equality of value in obols and drachmas, but that each shall receive an equal quantum of economic satisfaction. This is the true standpoint at bottom, and when, as is common, the mere purpose of money-making dominates in the pursuit of exchange, the profit is too often at the expense of the other party. Such exchange certainly does not mean economic advance or general prosperity. It merely makes possible an increase in the inequalities of wealth and poverty. There is much of fallacy in the prevalent idea that business necessarily increases the wealth of a state. Ruskin, though like Aristotle extreme and one-sided in his view, struck at the root of this error. He also declared that the result of exchange should be advantage, not