Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. On Value.—Cost, and Value in Use.—Importance of Estimating Values in practical Economy.—Exchange Value.—Price.— Deductions from the above in reply to Lassalle's theory of reducing all value to labour only. — Conjunctures in Trade, and their influence on the Condition of the Working Classes. We have in the preceding chapter spoken of that incessant process of production and consumption which has for its object the increase and improvement of the personal life in the community. Now in order to the creation and formation of those commodities which can effect this, mental and bodily exertions are required, and certain values are attached to these efforts in proportion to their ultimate effects. Mental acquisitions, and moral results too, are judged according to their value. All scientific activity or technical experiments, all acts of statesmanship, are inaugurated first, and accompanied throughout, by a conviction of their respective values. We all estimate the amount of good any act of ours may produce; and herein, from our individual point, consists its value. Similarly, we deliberate on the comparative amount of pleasure and pain in the production of external commodities. sthet- ical and other considerations influence our final estimates as to the value of any commodity we desire to create, or utilize. We inquire therefore : (1) What is the amount of human life-vigour expended in the acquisition of any article in question ? In other words, what is our valuation of the cost ? (2) And inversely: how much life-vigour will it produce, what amount of enjoyment will it afford ? In other words, what is its value in the use f VALUK OP COMMODITIES AND HUMAN LIFE. 21 (3) What is the mutual relationship between these two values—cost, and use ? This last question...