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THE  SOCIALISM  OF  TO-DAY.

In  respect  of  value,  says  Marx,  commodities  intended  for
exchange  are  merely  crystallized  labour.  The  unit  of  labour
is  an  average  day’s  work,  which  varies  in  different  countries
and  at  different  times,  but  which  may  be  considered  a  fixed
quantity  in  a  given  community.  More  complicated  labour,  or
work  which  demands  the  higher  faculties,  must  be  considered
as  simple  labour  raised  to  a  higher  power.  A  useful  article,
then,  possesses  value  only  because  it  represents  labour.  The
things  most  necessary  to  existence,  air  and  water,  have  in
general  no  value,  because  they  can  be  obtained  without  labour.
How,  then,  is  the  quantity  of  values  represented  by  an  article
to  be  measured  ?  By  the  quantity  of  “  the  substance  creative
of  value,”  that  is  to  say  of  labour,  that  it  contains.  The  quantity ­
  of  labour  is  itself  measured  by  the  duration  of  the  labour,
by  days  and  hours.  Here  Marx  makes  a  correction  in  the
theory  of  Smith  and  Ricardo,  and  forestalls  an  objection.  It
might,  in  fact,  be  said  that,  if  it  is  the  duration  of  the  labour  that
creates  the  value  of  the  products,  a  coat  which  took  a  tailor
twice  as  long  to  make  as  was  necessary,  would  therefore  be
twice  as  valuable.  Not  so,  replies  Marx  ;  the  measure  of  the
value  of  things  is  the  duration  of  the  labour  on  the  average  requisite, ­
  performed  with  the  average  amount  of  skill  and  diligence, ­
  and  in  the  normal  industrial  conditions  at  any  given
time.  If  with  the  aid  of  a  sewing  machine  a  shirt  can  be  made
in  one  day,  that  will  be  the  measure  of  the  value  of  a  shirt,  and
not  the  two  or  three  days  that  were  formerly  necessary.  Even
thus  amended,  the  theory  which  makes  labour  the  source  of
value  is  entirely  erroneous,  as  will  be  shown  later  on.  We  may
here  remark  that,  like  all  abstractions,  these  averages  are  wanting ­
  in  scientific  exactness.  In  truth,  each  kind  of  labour  has
its  own  value,  its  own  particular  character.  Is  the  day’s  labour
of  a  mason  of  precisely  the  same  value  as  that  of  a  carpenter,
a  painter,  a  carver,  a  plumber,  or  a  common  labourer  ?  Clearly
not.  How,  too,  can  they  be  compared  unless  by  the  wages
that  each  of  these  workmen  receives  ?  It  must  be  admitted,
der  Kapitalismus  ;  Rud.  Meyer,  Der  Emancipationskampf  des  vierten
Standes  ;  and  in  French,  the  short  but  solid  study  of  M.  Maurice  Block,
Les  Théoriciens  du  Socialisme  en  Allemagne.