“There is one sort of labour which adds[32] to the value of the subject upon which it is bestowed. There is another which has no such effect.”
“The labour of the manufacturer,” he adds, “fixes and realizes itself in some particular subject or vendible commodity, which lasts for some time at least after the labour is past. The labour of the menial servant, on the contrary” (to which the author assimilates in this respect that of soldiers, magistrates, musicians, professors, etc.), “does not fix or realize itself in any particular subject or vendible commodity. His services perish in the very instant of their performance, and leave no trace of value behind them.”
Here we find Value connected rather with the modifications of matter than with the satisfactions of men—a profound error; for the sole good to be obtained from the modification of material things is the attainment of that satisfaction which is the design, the end, the consommation[33] of every Effort. If, then, we realize that satisfaction by a direct and immediate effort, the result is the same; and if that effort can be made the subject of transactions, exchanges, estimation, it includes the principle of Value.
As regards the interval which may elapse between the effort and the satisfaction, surely Adam Smith attributes far too much importance to it, when he says that the existence or non-existence of Value depends upon it. “The value of a vendible commodity,” he says, “lasts for some time at least.” Undoubtedly it lasts until the commodity has answered its purpose, which is to satisfy a want; and exactly the same thing may be said of a service. As long as that plate of strawberries remains on the sideboard it preserves its value. Why? Because it is the result of a service [p157] which I have designed to render to myself, or that another has rendered to me by way of compensation, and of which I have not yet made use. The moment I have made use of it, by eating the strawberries, the value will disappear. The service will vanish and have no trace of value behind. The very same thing holds of personal services. The consumer makes the value disappear, for it has been created only for that purpose. It is of little consequence, as regards the principle of value, whether the service is undertaken to satisfy a want to-day, to-morrow, or a year hence.
Take another case. I am afflicted with a cataract. I call in an oculist. The instrument he makes use of has value, because it has durability; the operation he performs, it is said, has none, and yet I pay for it, and I have made choice of one among many rival operators, and arranged his remuneration beforehand. To maintain that this service has no value is to run counter to notorious facts and notions universally received. And of what use, I would ask, is a theory which, far from taking universal practice into account, ignores it altogether?
I would not have the reader suppose that I am carried away by an inordinate love of controversy. If I dwell upon these elementary notions, it is to prepare his mind for consequences of the highest importance, which will be afterwards developed. I know not whether it be to violate the laws of method to indicate these consequences by anticipation, but I venture to depart slightly from the regular course, in order to obviate the danger of becoming tedious. This is the reason why I have spoken prematurely of Property and Community; and for the same reason I shall here say a word respecting Capital.
As Adam Smith made value to reside in matter, he could not conceive Capital as existing otherwise than in an accumulation of material objects. How, then, can we attribute Value to Services not susceptible of being accumulated or converted into capital?
Among the different descriptions of Capital, we give the first place to tools, machines, instruments of labour. They serve to make natural forces co-operate in the work of production, and, attributing to these forces the faculty of creating value, people were led to imagine that instruments of labour, as such, were endowed with the same faculty, independently of any human services. Thus the spade, the plough, the steam-engine, were supposed to co-operate simultaneously with natural agents and human forces in creating not only Utility, but Value also. But all value is remunerated by exchange. Who, then, is to receive that portion of value which is independent of all human service? [p158]
It is thus that the school of Proudhon, after having brought the rent of land into question, has contested also the interest of capital—a larger thesis, because it includes the other. I maintain that the Proudhonian error, viewed scientifically, has its root in the prior error of Adam Smith. I shall demonstrate that capital, like natural agents, considered in itself, and with reference to its own proper action, creates utility, but never creates value. The latter is essentially the fruit of a legitimate service. I shall demonstrate also that, in the social order, capital is not an accumulation of material objects, depending on material durability, but an accumulation of Values, that is to say, of services. This will put an end (virtually at least, by removing its foundation) to the recent attack upon the productiveness of capital, and in a way satisfactory to the objectors themselves; for if I prove that there is nothing in the business of exchange but a mutuality of services, M. Proudhon must own himself vanquished by my victory over his principle.
Labour.—Adam Smith and his disciples have assigned the principle of Value to Labour under the condition of Materiality. This is contrary to the other opinion that natural forces play a certain part in the production of Value. I have not here to combat the contradictions which become apparent in all their fatal consequences when these authors come to discuss the rent of land and the interest of capital.