1. "Price" for the trade-in value requested or accepted by a seller, "cost" for the trade-in value offered or accepted by a buyer.
An exchange value accepted by a seller is for him a product, in the sense of this word in accounting. An exchange value accepted by a buyer is for him a burden, in the sense of this word in accounting.
2. The vocabulary of accountants and management controllers frequently uses the distinction between price and cost.
The same is true in everyday life. Sellers' prices are, once the exchange is concluded, costs for buyers.
3. Using the words price and "cost" as just said is not only convenient.
Some speak of the "cost of capital", but refuse or are reluctant to speak of the "price of capital". Others admit that a rate of profit distributed over capital is a price, but refuse or are reluctant to speak of the "cost of capital."
The reality of economic exchanges means that every price is, for the co-exchanger, a cost. Since the exchange value of every commodity is a price and a cost, every remuneration for labor and savings in capital is a price and a cost.
4. Starting from the observation that the prices of composite commodities tend to be sums of costs begins an explanation.
The level of dearness of these commodities, often produced in large series, is not arbitrary. But what are the determinants of the remuneration of savers and workers? In order for the explanation to take shape, it must include two elucidations, one on the formation of the prices of the elementary and primary commodity that is the service of labor in exchange for its remuneration, the other on the formation of the prices of the service of savings in capital.
5. This is a problem of order.
First of all, the elucidation of the formation of the price of labor, or first of all the elucidation of the formation of the price of capital? Does the cost of capital play a role in the formation of the price of labor? Or is it on the contrary in the formation of the price of capital that the cost of labor intervenes?