SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND. 
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somewhat plainer language, labour is the sole source of value, 
and the amount of time during which labour of average 
efficiency, making use of the best methods known to the age, 
must be exerted to produce a useful commodity is the measure 
of the exchange-value of that commodity. The leading error 
in this theory is that it ignores the part played by utility in 
determining value. It admits, indeed, that an article to have 
any value must be useful, but it asserts that value is in propor 
tion to labour and to nothing else ; whereas, as M. de Laveleye 
has pointed out, value really springs from utility, including in 
that term the element of rarity. It is not easy to express the 
law of value, as usually explained by Economists to-day, in a 
few words, but perhaps it may be said with sufficient accuracy 
that where the element of rarity exercises little influence, where 
the commodity can be multiplied indeflnitely, its normal value 
will tend to equal the expenses of its production, in which 
expenses the wages of labour, including earnings of management, 
are an important but not the sole element ; but even in this case 
these expenses of production, owing to the laws of increasing 
and of diminishing return, will be partly determined by the 
extent of the demand : a gradually increasing demand reducing 
the expenses of production, where the former law applies, 
as in the case of those manufactured articles in which raw 
material is a small element, and augmenting them, where the 
latter applies as in the case of agricultural produce ; and this 
demand is itself determined by the relative utility of the com 
modity in existing social conditions. When, however, the 
commodity is one that cannot be reproduced, its value will 
depend solely upon the demand for it, that is, upon its relative 
social utility. 
Next, we meet with the famous theory of “Surplus Value,” 
on which great stress is laid, and which, summarizing Mr. 
Hyndman's account, may be briefly stated as follows ;—Labour- 
force, alone of commodities, has the remarkable quality of 
being the source of additional exchange-value : its consumption, 
in fact, creating more than its own value or cost of production. 
I'he labourer, being divorced from the means of production, is 
obliged to sell his labour-force for what it will fetch. The capi-