portion of their products in exchange for mine. I shall then
always have in my possession more of my own special product than
I consume; just as my fellows will always have in their
possession more of their respective products than they use. This
tacit agreement is fulfilled by COMMERCE. Here we may observe
that the logical succession of the two kinds of value is even
more apparent in history than in theory, men having spent
thousands of years in disputing over natural wealth (this being
what is called PRIMITIVE COMMUNISM) before their industry
afforded opportunity for exchange.

Now, the capacity possessed by all products, whether natural or
the result of labor, of serving to maintain man, is called
distinctively value in use; their capacity of purchasing each
other, value in exchange. At bottom this is the same thing,
since the second case only adds to the first the idea of
substitution, which may seem an idle subtlety; practically, the
consequences are surprising, and beneficial or fatal by turns.

Consequently, the distinction established in value is based on
facts, and is not at all arbitrary: it is for man, in submitting
to this law, to use it to increase his welfare and liberty.
Labor, as an author (M. Walras) has beautifully expressed it, is
a war declared against the parsimony of Nature; by it wealth and
society are simultaneously created. Not only does labor produce
incomparably more wealth than Nature gives us,--for instance, it
has been remarked that the shoemakers alone in France produce
ten times more than the mines of Peru, Brazil, and Mexico
combined,--but, labor infinitely extending and multiplying its
rights by the changes which it makes in natural values, it