This last theory, with its wholesale condemnation of income of every kind save the worker’s wage, seems much more logical than any of the others. But as a matter of fact it is much more open to criticism. If it can be demonstrated that the value of products is not the mere result of manual labour, then Marx’s idea falls to the ground. The Saint-Simonians were never embarrassed by any theory of value. Their whole contention rests upon the distinction between the income which is got from labour and the revenue which is derived from capital, which every one can appreciate. It was a distinction which had already been emphasised by Sismondi, and no conclusion other than the illegitimacy of all revenue not derived from labour can be drawn from the premises thus stated. Some basis other than labour must be discovered if this revenue is ever to be justified, and a new defence of private property must somehow be attempted. The exigencies of production itself may supply such justification. Private property and the special kind of revenue which is derived from its possession justifies itself, in the opinion of a growing number of economists, on account of the stimulus it affords to production and the accumulation of wealth. This seems the most advantageous method of defence, and it is one of the grounds chosen by the Physiocrats.[474] But the Saint-Simonians from the very first set this argument aside and attacked the institution of private property in the interests of social utility no less than in the interest of justice. Production as well as distribution, in their opinion, demanded its extinction. (_b_) This brings us to the second point, which Saint-Simon did little more than suggest, namely, whether the institution of private property as at present existing is in the best interests of producers. The Saint-Simonians hold that it clearly is not, so long as the present method of distributing the instruments of production continues. At the present moment capital is transmitted in accordance with the laws of inheritance. Individuals chosen by the accident of birth are its depositors, and they are charged with the most difficult of all tasks, namely, the best utilisation of the agents of production. Social interest demands that they should be placed in more capable hands and distributed in those places and among those industries in which the need for those particular instruments is most keenly felt, without any fear of a scarcity in one place or a glut in another.[475] To-day it is a blind chance that picks out the men destined to carry out this infinitely difficult task. And all the efforts of the Saint-Simonians are concentrated just on this one point—inheritance.