In common with all the great economists, Socialists hold that wealth is produced by human labor applied to appropriate natural objects. This, as we have seen, does not mean that labor is the sole source of wealth. Still less does it mean that the mere expenditure of labor upon natural objects must inevitably result in the production of wealth. If a man spends his time digging holes in the ground and filling them up again, or dipping water from the ocean in a bucket and pouring it back again, the labor so expended upon natural objects would not produce wealth of any kind. Nor is the productivity of mental labor denied. In the term "labor" is implied the totality of human energies expended in production, regardless of whether those energies be physical or mental. In modern society wealth consists of social use-values, commodities.
We must, therefore, begin our analysis of capitalist society with an analysis of a commodity. "A commodity," says Marx, "is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference. Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production."[164] But a commodity must be something more than an object satisfying human wants. Such objects are simple use-values, but commodities are something else in addition to simple use-values. The manna upon which the pilgrim exiles of the Bible story were fed, for instance, was not a commodity, though it fulfilled the conditions of this first part of our definition by satisfying human wants. We must carry our definition further, therefore. In addition to use-value, then, a commodity must possess exchange-value. In other words, it must have a social use-value, a use-value to others, and not merely to the producer.
Thus, things may have the quality of satisfying human wants without being commodities. To state the matter in the language of the economists, use-values may, and often do, exist without economic value, value, that is to say, in exchange. Air, for example, is absolutely indispensable to life, yet it is not--except in special, abnormal conditions--subject to sale or exchange. With a use-value that is beyond computation, it has no exchange-value. Similarly, water is ordinarily plentiful and has no economic value; it is not a commodity. A seeming contradiction exists in the case of the water supply of cities where water for domestic use is commercially supplied, but a moment's reflection will show that it is not the water, but the social service of bringing it to a desired location for the consumer's convenience that represents economic value. Over and above that there is, however, the element of monopoly-price which enters into the matter. With that we have not, at this point, anything to do. Under ordinary circumstances, water, like light, is plentiful; its utility to man is not due to man's labor, and it has, therefore, no economic value. But in exceptional circumstances, as in an arid desert or in a besieged fortress, a millionaire might be willing to give all his wealth for a little water, thus making the value of what is ordinarily valueless almost infinite. What may be called natural use-values have no economic value. And even use-values that are the result of human labor may be equally without economic value. If I make something to satisfy some want of my own, it will have no economic value unless it will satisfy the want of some one else. So, unless a use-value is social, unless the object produced is of use to some other person than the producer, it will have no value in the economic sense: it will not be _exchangeable_.