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  proportion ­
  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  commodity ­
  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  ;—Labourforce,
  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-