I must have but feebly explained the theory of ‹value› if the reader imagines that value diminishes immediately and of its own accord, by the simple fact of the co-operation of natural forces, and the relief thereby afforded to human labour. It is not so; for then we might say with the English Economists that value is proportional to labour. The man who is aided by a natural and gratuitous force renders his services more easily; but he does not [p292] on that account renounce voluntarily any portion whatever of his accustomed remuneration. To induce him to do that, external coercion—pressure from without—severe but not unjust pressure—is necessary. It is Competition which exerts this pressure. As long as Competition does not intervene, as long as the man who has availed himself of a natural agent preserves his secret, that natural agent is gratuitous, but it is not yet ‹common›. The victory has been gained, but to the profit only of a single man, or a single class. It is not yet a benefit to mankind at large. No change has yet taken place, except that one description of ‹services›, although partly relieved from the pain of muscular exertion, still exacts all its former remuneration. We have, on the one hand, a man who exacts from all his fellows the same amount of labour as formerly, although he offers them a limited amount of his own labour in return. On the other, we have mankind at large, who are still obliged to make the same sacrifice of time and of labour in order to obtain a product now realized in part by nature. Were things to remain in this state, a principle of indefinite inequality would be introduced into the world with every new invention. Not only could we not say that value is proportional to labour; we could not even say that value tends to become proportional to labour. All that we have said in the preceding chapters about ‹gratuitous utility› and ‹progressive community› would be chimerical. It would not be true that services are exchanged against services, in such a way that the gifts of God are transferred gratuitously from one man to another, down to the ultimate recipient, who is the consumer. Each would continue to be paid, not only for his labour, but for the natural forces which he had once succeeded in setting to work; in a word, society would be constituted on the principle of universal Monopoly, in place of on the principle of progressive Community.