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CHAPTER 2 THE POSTULATES OF THE CLASSICAL ECONOMICS 第二章 古典经济学的假定条件 MOST treatises on the theory of Value and Production are primarily concerned with the distribution of a given volume of employed resources between different uses and with the conditions which, assuming the employment of this quantity of resources, determine their relative rewards and the relative values of their products. 大多数关于价值论和生产论的著述均主要既关注既定量的已用资源在不同用途之间如何配置，也关注在使用这一既定量资源的前提下，各种资源的相对报酬及其产品的相对价值如何决定。 The question, also, of the volume of the available resources, in the sense of the size of the employable population, the extent of natural wealth and the accumulated capital equipment, has often been treated descriptively. But the pure theory of what determines the actual employment of the available resources has seldom been examined in great detail. To say that it has not been examined at all would, of course, be absurd. For every discussion concerning fluctuations of employment, of which there have been many, has been concerned with it. I mean, not that the topic has been overlooked, but that the fundamental theory underlying it has been deemed so simple and obvious that it has received, at the most, a bare mention. 同样，对于可用资源数量的问题，例如可就业人口的规模，自然财富的丰瘠以及累积的资本设备的多寡，一向采用描述的方法予以处理。但是，关于何种力量决定可用资源实际使用数量的纯理论在很多细节上并未得到检验。当然，要说这种理论全然未得到检验未免荒谬，因为讨论资源使用量的波动的论述为数甚多，而每种论述都涉及到前述纯理论。我并不是说这个主题被忽视了，而是要指出这一主题所依托的基本理论一向被认为如此简单和明显，以致最多只需稍作提及。 I The classical theory of employment—supposedly simple and obvious--has been based, I think, on two fundamental postulates, though practically without discussion namely: 我认为，尽管实际上并未加以讨论，但被视作简单和明了的古典就业理论奠基于两个基本假定之上，即： I. The wage is equal to the marginal product of labour. Ⅰ. 工资等于劳动的边际产品 That is to say, the wage of an employed person is equal to the value which would be lost if employment were to be reduced by one unit (after deducting any other costs which this reduction of output would avoid); subject, however, to the qualification that the equality may be distu