Aví/?Z MARX. 27 
then, that all wages are in exact proportion to the value of the 
work done. But this is precisely what Marx disputes. 
From these premises, our author concludes that labour 
becomes more productive and creates more utilities all to no 
purpose, it does not produce more values. In fact, if labour 
measured by time is the sole source of value, articles manufac 
tured in greater quantity in the same lapse of time, all put 
together, represent no more value, because each individual 
article is worth less. By the strictly logical chain of these 
abstractions we arrive at this singular result, that all the inven 
tions of science, all the improvements of manufacture, produce 
more utilities, without increasing the sum total of values. 
Bastiat had expressed a similar idea. 
Let us now see how capital arises. According to Marx, it 
is by no means from thrift or abstinence, as “the common 
Political Economy ” asserts. Nor is it any more from exchange, 
as idle people, seeing how merchants make rapid fortunes, are 
apt to imagine. In fact, exchange is normally made on the 
footing of equality, values against values ; and if by artifice or 
skill Paul sells to Peter for a commodity worth only ^^4, 
Paul, it is true, gains but as Peter loses it, the community 
is none the richer, no new value is created, no new capital 
formed. This opinion, developed with great precision by J. 
B. Say, is held by the greater number of Economists. Never 
theless, in my opinion, it is not well founded. Condillac was 
right when he asserted that in every exchange both parties 
gain, because each obtains the object which suits him best.* 
A lady, he says, sells some acres of land in order to purchase 
a cashmere shawl, and is astonished at obtaining such a magni 
ficent article in exchange for such an ugly piece of meadow. 
Each party gets what he wants, and is thus better satisfied. 
Marx and J. B. Say look only at the value in exchange, 
which, perhaps, does not increase in the act of exchange, 
though an object, on the approach of those who have need of 
* See “ Commerce et le gouvernement^' by Condillac, Guillaumin’s edi 
tion, p. 267. This little work, like the majority of those of the eighteenth 
century, contains many just remarks, expressed with great clearness and 
intelligence.