36 
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 repro 
duction 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.