shown themselves wonderfully careless. Labor is said TO HAVE
VALUE, not as merchandise itself, but in view of the values
supposed to be contained in it potentially. The VALUE OF LABOR
is a figurative expression, an anticipation of effect from cause.

It is a fiction by the same title as the PRODUCTIVITY OF
CAPITAL. Labor produces, capital has value: and when, by a sort
of ellipsis, we say the value of labor, we make an enjambement
which is not at all contrary to the rules of language, but which
theorists ought to guard against mistaking for a reality. Labor,
like liberty, love, ambition, genius, is a thing vague and
indeterminate in its nature, but qualitatively defined by its
object,--that is, it becomes a reality through its product.
When, therefore, we say: This man's labor is worth five francs
per day, it is as if we should say: The daily product of this
man's labor is worth five francs.

Now, the effect of labor is continually to eliminate scarcity and
opinion as constitutive elements of value, and, by necessary
consequence, to transform natural or indefinite utilities
(appropriated or not) into measurable or social utilities: whence
it follows that labor is at once a war declared upon the
parsimony of Nature and a permanent conspiracy against property.

According to this analysis, value, considered from the point of
view of the association which producers, by division of labor and
by exchange, naturally form among themselves, is the PROPORTIONAL
RELATION OF THE PRODUCTS WHICH CONSTITUTE WEALTH, and what we
call the value of any special product is a formula which
expresses, in terms of money, the proportion of this product to