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THE  SOCIALISM  OF  TO-DAY.

active  equalizing  agent  for  profits,  wages,  rent,  and  interest.  This
is  reserved,  it  appears,  for  the  second  volume,  never  published  ;
but  this  method  of  successive  analyses,  admissible  in  mathematics, ­
  where  one  speculates  about  abstract  data,  gives  entirely
false  results  when  applied  to  Political  Economy,  which  is  concerned ­
  with  facts.  To  affect  to  give  a  just  idea  of  economic
phenomena,  without  speaking  of  competition,  which  is  in
general  their  impelling  force,  is  like  attempting  to  explain  the
terrestrial  system  while  omitting  gravitation,  which  is  its  moving
power.
Another  error  of  Marx  consists  in  asserting  that  capital  is
dead  labour,  which  revives  and  grows  fat  only  at  the  expense
of  living  labour.  Without  doubt  the  products  of  former  labour
applied  to  a  new  production—for  instance,  machines—are  not
endowed  with  life.  In  themselves  they  are  inert  ;  but  if,
owing  to  them,  the  same  muscular  efforts  can  produce  more
articles  of  utility,  may  we  not  say  that  they  are  productive  ?  A
man  armed  with  a  steel  axe  will  do  ten  times  more  work  than
a  savage  with  his  flint  axe.  Both  tools  are  evidently  inert  ;
but  if  with  the  former  we  obtain  much  more  produce  than
with  the  latter,  ought  we  not  to  put  it  down  to  the  superiority
of  the  steel  instrument  ?
In  order  to  prove  that  capital  does  not  produce  value,
Marx  shows  that  if  by  means  of  a  new  machine  one  can
manufacture  twice  as  many  articles,  each  of  these  articles  being
worth  only  half  as  much  as  before,  the  total  value  remains  the
same.  This  is  plausible,  but  false  ;  for  the  goal  to  attain  is
the  multiplication  of  useful  articles  quite  irrespective  of  their
money  value.  The  value  in  use  is  the  important  point.  If
with  a  better  instrument  I  obtain  twice  as  many  goods,  I  am
really  twice  as  rich  ;  for  my  comforts  being  doubled,  I  have
produced  a  double  amount  of  real  value.
As  Bastiat  well  remarks,  whenever  we  change  “  onerous
values  for  gratuitous  values  ”  humanity  is  enriched.  If  all  the
necessaries  of  existence  were  as  abundant  as  air  and  water,
their  intrinsic  value,  that  is  to  say,  their  capacity  to  satisfy  our
wants,  would  be  in  no  way  diminished.  They  would  exchange,
it  is  true,  against  very  much  less  money,  and  their  money  value