these objectors rely are drawn from the sphere of agriculture, except, of course, when they are taken from the air, like the golden meteor. Yet, they comprise two different categories of objects. In the one category are to be placed those objects whose attainment without labor is purely accidental, and in the other those whose attainment without labor is the only way in which they are attainable, for the reason that they can not be produced by labor at all. The value of the articles of the first category does not contradict the general laws of value as they are laid down by Marx, nor does it even form an exception to the rule. The gold-lump accidentally found by a man will not be thrown away, no matter whether it was lost by somebody who spent labor for its production, or fell down from the clouds, for the reason that it has just as much value as if he had obtained it by hard labor. Its value, like that of all commodities, is the socially necessary labor which must be spent in its reproduction. The clouds not being in the habit of showering gold on us, and the necessarily prevailing method of obtaining gold being by spending labor on its production (strictly speaking,—on its extraction, as in the case of all products of the extracting industries), this gold, if wasted, as suggested by Böhm-Bawerk, could not be obtained again from the clouds, but would have to be produced by labor. The same is true of the silver found in the mine. Assuming, as Böhm-Bawerk seems to, that the mine was of such a character that it did not require any labor to extract the silver from it, the silver will still have the value represented by the labor socially necessary for its reproduction, owing to the fact that silver is usually obtained by working at its extraction. And it might as well be noted here, that, under the laws of Value as laid down before, it is the least productive silver mine necessarily in operation in order to satisfy the wants of society, that will set the norm for the value of silver, taking, of course, into consideration any by-product which may be obtained from such mine while mining for silver. The case of the wine is akin to that of the silver.
