It must be remembered that "good" wine only has a greater value than "cheap" wine where it is wanted in society,—just like silver. There are places where "good" wine is not wanted; and places where silver is not much in demand. In such places "good" wine will not be considered of any more value than "cheap" wine; nor will silver be more valuable than some "base" metal. In societies where "noble" metals and "good" wines are wanted, these become the objects of special industries, respectively. And just as the labor expended on its extraction in the least productive silver mine sets the value on silver, because this mine must be used for reproduction, so will the labor expended on the production of good wine by cultivation of the least adapted soil necessarily employed therefore set the value on good wine, and for the same reason.
The same principle applies to the wood question. Where the "natural grown" wood of the primeval forests is insufficient to satisfy the wants of society and it has to be "raised," it is the labor expended on the "raised" wood that will set the value on all wood, and the wood of the primeval forest will have the same value as the wood artificially raised, for the reason that it can only be reproduced by means of raising; the cost of its reproduction is, therefore, the social labor necessary to be expended for "raised" wood.
It is entirely different, however, with the articles of the second category, chief and most typical among which is land. Why should land upon which no labor was spent for its production, and upon which no labor need or can be spent for reproduction have value? With all that, however, this does not refute Marx's theory of value. We have already stated before that Marx went into the examination of this, subject at length, and formulated a theory which none of his critics have even attempted to refute. Indeed, singularly enough, this branch of the Marxian theory has been passed by his critics with little or no comment. This theory, however, amounts to nothing less than this:—that land
