Though if it were a fight between cognac and water, many people for a while would take water. That is, water is more necessary. You can t quench a sensible thirst by cognac. Value, then, is the one thing that has remained in economics since the work of Petty, let s say, who is a 17th-century economist, through the 18th century, 19th century, with McCulloch, Cairnes, and the like. It doesn t depend, in other words, on that inanimate factor in production made by man himself which is called capital.
Capital is either tools or money instruments or machines, or money.
Management of labor is labor as a lieutenant, who manages privates, still works. And a conductor who manages an orchestra still works. The other thing, making money through capital, which can be done by one s nephew in Dutch Guiana that is, he puts in capital and never sees the place that is not labor, and that is profit in its purest hurtful form. Management is labor. Insofar as an executive works, he is a laboring man.