Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/133

 Rh utility the productive elements would confer if they were consumed otherwise than in tuming out the produce desired. It shows us, for example, that the utility of the materials and labour, by the aid of which an important telegraphic communication is set up, would have amounted to very much less in those other uses, from which they have been withdrawn in order to this. From this however it follows, that it is impossible to estimate the value of the communication as highly as its own high utility would absolutely warrant, since it can only be,—and precisely if it can be,—set up at the much smaller sacrifice of that utility which is involved in the cost of production. This extraneous utility is in this case the ‘marginal utility’ which affords a measure for the value. To value a product by its cost means then to impute as much utility to it as is to be imputed to all its productive elements taken together. Taken thus, products present themselves not merely according to their sources, but according to their value as well, as the syntheses of their productive elements. That product which requires them in greater quantity has the greater value. Consequently cost of production determines the relative value of produce, while the absolute value of the commodities consumed in the cost is determined by the value of the forthcoming produce.

Labour, like land and capital, owes the reward imputed to it not only to its productiveness, but also to its scarcity, i.e., to the fact that it is not to be had in free abundance. Labour, however, has yet another motive force in itself, by which it can influence the estimation of value. Everyone is personally concerned to evade the toils and perils of labour. Value may accrue to products from this consideration, inasmuch as the man who possesses them is spared the toils and dangers of acquiring them. This is Ricardo's fundamental idea, and on its development he lavished all the keenness of his intellect. The Austrian school has not passed carelessly over this motive force and its theoretic expositions, but has devoted is very thorough-going attention to them. On this occasion I shall limit myself to a single comment. If Ricardo's idea were correct, and commodities were, in the strict sense of the word, of no importance to us, except that the possession of them saved us labour, which we should otherwise have to apply elsewhere, then the difference between rich and poor would perforce be quite other than what it unfortunately is. The rich man's privileges would consist only in possessing those things which the poor man will also pcrsssss, but which he must first give himself the trouble of acquiring; his prerogative would lie, not in greater enjoyment or a more secure existence, but in greater ease. What nation would not eagerly exchange the facts of life for this Utopia!