AA´ represent value annihilated, relative wealth which has disappeared, property become common, utility formerly onerous, now gratuitous.
For, as regards John, who here represents the producer, he is reinstated in his former condition. With the same effort which it cost him formerly to produce IB, he can now produce twice as much. In order to obtain twice ID, we see him constrained to give twice IB, or what IB represents, be it furniture, books, houses, or what it may.
Who profits by all this? Clearly Peter, the producer of ID, who here represents consumers in general, including John himself. If, in fact, John desires to consume his own product, he profits by the saving of time represented by the suppression of AA´. As regards Peter, that is to say as regards consumers in general, they can now purchase IB with half the expenditure of time, effort, labour, value, compared with what it would have cost them before the intervention of natural forces. These forces, then, are gratuitous, and, moreover, common.
Since I have ventured to illustrate my argument by geometrical figures, perhaps I may be permitted to give another example, and I shall be happy if by this method—somewhat whimsical, I allow, as applied to Political Economy—I can render more intelligible to the reader the phenomena which I wish to describe.
As a producer, or as a consumer, every man may be considered as a centre from whence radiate the services which he renders, and to which tend the services which he receives in exchange.
Suppose then that there is placed at A (Fig. 1) a producer, a copyist, for example, or transcriber of manuscripts, who here represents all producers, or production in general. He furnishes to society four manuscripts. If at the present moment the value of each of these manuscripts is equal to 15, he renders services equal to 60, and receives an equal value, variously spread over a multitude of services. To simplify the demonstration, I suppose only [p331] four of them, proceeding from four points of the circumference BCDE.
Fig. 1.
Fig. 2.
Value produced = 60
Value received = 60
Utility produced = 4