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 profit, and repudiated the idea that the mere fact that goods change hands necessarily means general enrichment.729
The central truth in their protest needed to be spoken, though both erred in not sufficiently recognizing that the labor involved in exchange creates an added time and place value, and therefore has a right to be called productive.
They also failed to observe the fact of the necessary risk involved in the business of exchange, which should be repaid with a fair additional profit. For the cornering of markets and the manipulation of prices, for the sake of individual enrichment, modern economists and statesmen, with Aristotle and Ruskin, are fast coming to have only words of protest.
Moreover, contrary to Barker’s assertion, demand, as an element of price, is prominent throughout this discussion of Aristotle.