CHAPTER I. VALUE. SECTION I.— VALUE IN THE GENERIC SENSE. THAT natural distinction, which takes place from the very beginnings of society, between value as founded upon some serviceable quality in an object too largely diffused to confer any power of purchasing other objects, and value as founded upon some similar quality in an object so limited as to become property, and thus having a power to purchase other objects, has long been familiar to the public ear under the antithetic expressions of "value in use" and "value in exchange." Who first noticed pointedly a distinction which must always obscurely have been moving in the minds of men, it would now be idle to inquire: such an inquiry would too much resemble that Greek question, "Who first invented sneezing?" For my own part, the eldest author, in whom I remember to have traced this distinction formally developed, is Plautus,contemporary with Hannibal. He, in his Asinaria," has occasion to introduce a lively scene on a question of prompt payment between Argyrippus, a young man then occupied in sowing wild-oats, and Cælereta, a prudent woman settled in business on her own account. She is in fact a lena,- which name, however did not bear so horrid a construction under Pagan morals as most justly it does under Christian: and, in that professional character, she is mistress of a young beauty with whom Argyrippus had celebrated a left-handed marriage some time back, which connection he now seeks to renew upon a second contract. But for this a price is asked of sixty guineas. The question which arises between the parties respects the propriety of the household economy for the present going on upon tick, which Argyrippus views as the sublimest of philosophical discoveries; whilst the lena violently resists it, as a vile, one-sided policy, patronized by all who happened to be buyers, but rejected universally by sellers. The following is the particular passage which concerns the present distinction between value in use and value in exchange: "ARGYR. Ubi illæc quæ dedi ante ? "CELER. Abusa: nam, si ea durarent mihi, Mulier mitteretur ad te : nunquam quicquam poscerem. Diem, aquam, solem, lunam, noctem, — hæc argento non emo: Cætera, quæque volumus uti, Græcâ mercamur fide. Quum à pistore panem petimus, vinum ex œnoplio, Si æs habent, dant mercem: eâdem nos disciplinâ utimur. ARG. What has become of those sums which in times past I gave you? CAL. All spent, sir,—all consumed; for, believe me, if those moneys still survived, the young woman should be despatched to your house without another word; once paid in full, I'm not the woman that would trouble you for a shilling. Look here:the successions of day and night, water, sunlight, moonlight, all these things I purchase freely without money; but that heap of things beside, which my establishment requires, those I pay for on the old terms of Grecian credit. When I send for a loaf to the baker's, for wine to the vintner's, certainly the articles are delivered; but when? Why, as soon as those people have touched the cash. Now, that same practice is what I in my turn apply to others. My hands have still eyes at their finger-ends: their faith is strong in all money which actually they see. For "caution," as you call it for guaranties — they are nothing: security be d-d; and that's an old saying. The latter part of the speech wanders off into the difference between the system of prompt payment on the one hand, and of credit on the other. But the part in italics confines itself to the difference between value in use and value in exchange, between the class of things valuable which could be had for nothing, and that other class of things valuable which must be paid for; secondly, which must also be paid for on the spot. The former class is a limited class; the latter so extensive, that she makes no attempt to enumerate the items: she simply selects two, bread and wine, as representative items,— one of which is the more striking, because it represents a necessity already provided for by nature in the gratuitous article of water. Here, then, already two centuries before the Christian era, in the second or chief Punic war, is the great distinction brought out into broad daylight between the things useful to man which are too multiplied and diffused to be raised into property, and the things useful to man which are not so multiplied and diffused, but which, being hard to obtain, support the owner in demanding a price for them. Many people fancy that these two ideas never are, nor could be, confounded: and some people fancy, amongst whom was Mr. Malthus, that in the intercourse of real life the word value, or valuable, never is employed at all, rightly or not rightly, in the original sense, as implying mere value in use, but that (except amongst affected or pedantic talkers) this word "value" must always indicate some sort of value in exchange. We never, therefore, according to Mr. Malthus, use or could use such 66 a phrase as a valuable friend," or 66 a valuable doctrine." It would be impossible to say that " we ascribed great value to any deliberate judgment of such a judge”; or that “the friendship of a wise elder brother had proved of the highest value to a young man at Cambridge”; or that "the written opinion, which we had obtained from Mr. Attorney-General, was eminently valuable." Literally, it is terrific to find blank assertions made by men of sense so much in defiance of the truth, and on matters of fact lying so entirely within an ordinary experience. Full fifty times in every month must Mr. Malthus himself have used the word "value" and "valuable" in this very natural sense, which he denounces as a mere visionary sense, suggested by the existing books. Now, to show by a real and a recent case, how possible it is for a sensible man to use the words value or valuable in this original sense, not merely where a pure generic usefulness is concerned, but even in cases which must forcibly have pointed his attention to the other sense (the exchange sense) of the words, I cite in a note a striking instance of such a use, from this day's paper (the London Standard) for February 27th, 1843. Value in use, therefore, is an idea lurking by possibility under the elliptical term "value" quite as naturally, though not so frequently, as the idea of value in exchange. And, in any case of perplexity arising out of the term value employed absolutely, it may be well for the reader to examine closely if some such equivocation does not in reality cause the whole demur. One moment's consideration will convince the student that the second form of value - viz. value in exchange does not exclude the first form, value in use; for, on the contrary, the second form could not exist without presupposing the first. But, in the inverse case, the logic is different: value - in use, where it exists antithetically to the other form, not only may but must exclude it. This leads to another capital distinction:- Value in exchange is an idea constructed by superadding to the original element of serviceableness (or value in use) an accessory element of power [howsoever gained] to command an equivalent. It follows, therefore, that the original element, value in use, may be viewed in two states, — 1st, as totally disengaged from the secondary element; 2dly, as not disengaged from that element, but as necessarily combining with it. In the second state we have seen that it takes the name of "value in exchange." What name does it take in the first state, where it is wholly disengaged from the power of purchasing? Answer· [and let the reader weigh this well]-it takes the name of "wealth." Mr. Ricardo was the first person who had the sagacity to see, that the idea of wealth was the true polar antagonist to the idea of value in exchange; and that, without this regulative idea, it is impossible to keep the logic of political economy true to its duties. This doctrine, so essentially novel, he first explained in his celebrated chapter (numbered xviii. in his first edition) which bears for its title, "Value and Riches; their distinctive Properties." And in the early part of it he remarks most truly, that "many of the errors in political economy have arisen from errors on this subject, from considering an increase of riches and an increase of value as meaning the same thing." But it is singular enough, that even Ricardo did not consciously observe the exact coincidence of riches, under this new limitation of his own, with " value in use." This was an accident likely enough to arise under the absence of any positive occasion for directing his eye to that fact. It was, no doubt, a pure case of inadvertence. |