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CHAPTER 20“Enough to Buy Back the Product”1Amateur writers on economics are always asking for “just” pricesand “just” wages. These nebulous conceptions of economic justicecome down to us from medieval times. The classical economistsworked out, instead, a different concept—the concept of functionalprices and functional wages. Functional prices are those that encouragethe largest volume of production and the largest volume of sales.Functional wages are those that tend to bring about the highest volumeof employment and the largest payrolls.The concept of functional wages has been taken over, in a pervertedform, by the Marxists and their unconscious disciples, the purchasing-powerschool. Both of these groups leave to cruder minds thequestion whether existing wages are “fair.” The real question, theyinsist, is whether or not they will work. And the only wages that willwork, they tell us, the only wages that will prevent an imminent economiccrash, are wages that will enable labor “to buy back the productit creates.” The Marxist and purchasing-power schools attributeevery depression of the past to a preceding failure to pay such wages.And at no matter what moment they speak, they are sure that wagesare still not high enough to buy back the product.133