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THE  SOCIALISM  OF  TO-DAY.

can  easily  replace  it,  because  it  is  found  everywhere,  the  utility
of  possessing  it  will  be  very  small  ;  it  will  be  equal,  in  fact,  to
the  trouble  involved  in  procuring  a  similar  article.
Water,  it  is  said,  is  of  the  highest  utility,  and  yet  it  has
no  value  ;  therefore  it  is  not  utility  that  makes  value.  This
objection,  always  repeated,  depends  on  an  ambiguity  of  language
which  has  never  been  exposed,  because  it  sounds  very  plausible.
The  mistake  lies  in  this  :  by  water  in  the  first  sense  is  meant
water  in  general,  the  element,  and  in  this  sense  it  is  of  the
greatest  utility,  but  it  is  also  of  the  greatest  value  ;  for  a  person
lost  in  the  desert,  a  besieged  town,  a  country  ruined  by  drought,
would  give  anything  to  obtain  some  water.  When  it  is  said
that  water  has  no  value,  a  specific  portion  of  water  is  intended  ;
and  in  this  sense  it  has  also  very  little  utility.  What  is  the
value  of  a  pail  of  water  at  the  river  bank  ?  Nothing  beyond
the  trouble  of  fetching  it  At  the  fourth  story  of  a  house  it
is  worth,  perhaps,  a  penny  or  two,  representing  the  pay  of  the
servant  who  has  carried  it  up.  In  the  middle  of  Sahara,  to
the  traveller  who  cannot  at  any  price  obtain  it  elsewhere,  it
would  be  worth  all  the  money  in  the  world.  Thus  its  value
would  increase  in  the  measure  of  its  scarcity  or  in  proportion
to  the  difficulty  of  replacing  it.  We  may  say,  then,  using  words
in  their  usual  sense,  that  an  article  has  so  much  the  more
value  the  more  useful  it  is,  whether  as  answering  to  an  existing
want,  or  as  dispensing  with  the  expenditure  of  money  or  labour
necessary  to  procure  a  similar  article.
All  value  presupposes  some  labour,  for  a  man  must  at  least
gather  the  fruit  that  nature  offers  to  him  ;  but  the  value  is  not
in  proportion  to  the  labour,  for  if  he  picks  a  nut  he  will  have
a  much  less  valuable  article  than  if  he  detaches  a  branch  of
bananas.
Marx  asserts  that  the  value  of  the  labour-force  {arbeitskraft)
of  the  wage-earner  is  equal  to  the  cost  of  its  production,  that
is  to  say  to  the  maintenance  of  the  labourer,  and  consequently
to  the  hours  of  labour  “socially”  necessary  for  the  reproduction ­
  of  this  maintenance.  If  that  be  so,  it  is  not  easy  to
see  why  Marx  should  attack  capital,  inasmuch  as  it  pays  labour
at  its  just  value  in  giving  it  the  “  necessary  wages  ”  of  Ricardo.