38 
THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. 
active equalizing agent for profits, wages, rent, and interest. This 
is reserved, it appears, for the second volume, never published ; 
but this method of successive analyses, admissible in mathe 
matics, where one speculates about abstract data, gives entirely 
false results when applied to Political Economy, which is con 
cerned with facts. To affect to give a just idea of economic 
phenomena, without speaking of competition, which is in 
general their impelling force, is like attempting to explain the 
terrestrial system while omitting gravitation, which is its moving 
power. 
Another error of Marx consists in asserting that capital is 
dead labour, which revives and grows fat only at the expense 
of living labour. Without doubt the products of former labour 
applied to a new production—for instance, machines—are not 
endowed with life. In themselves they are inert ; but if, 
owing to them, the same muscular efforts can produce more 
articles of utility, may we not say that they are productive ? A 
man armed with a steel axe will do ten times more work than 
a savage with his flint axe. Both tools are evidently inert ; 
but if with the former we obtain much more produce than 
with the latter, ought we not to put it down to the superiority 
of the steel instrument ? 
In order to prove that capital does not produce value, 
Marx shows that if by means of a new machine one can 
manufacture twice as many articles, each of these articles being 
worth only half as much as before, the total value remains the 
same. This is plausible, but false ; for the goal to attain is 
the multiplication of useful articles quite irrespective of their 
money value. The value in use is the important point. If 
with a better instrument I obtain twice as many goods, I am 
really twice as rich ; for my comforts being doubled, I have 
produced a double amount of real value. 
As Bastiat well remarks, whenever we change “ onerous 
values for gratuitous values ” humanity is enriched. If all the 
necessaries of existence were as abundant as air and water, 
their intrinsic value, that is to say, their capacity to satisfy our 
wants, would be in no way diminished. They would exchange, 
it is true, against very much less money, and their money value