I (5)

Ricardo said: “The value of a commodity depends upon the amount of the labour necessary to produce it.” This definition has the advantage of simplicity, and therefore did not suit Karl Marx, who adopted Ricardo's definition, with the substitution of the expression “labour-power” for “labour,” and this constitutes his great discovery to the admiring eyes of Engels. But he does not always make use of this complementary expression.

In order to establish his proposition, Karl Marx starts with the elementary arithmetical truism that two quantities which are equal to a third are equal to one another. Let us see how this truism becomes distorted by Karl Marx's dialectical method.

A given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron. What does this equation tell us? It tells us that in two different things there exists in equal quantities something common to both. The two things must therefore be equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of them must be reducible to the third, independently of the other.

In exchange, these two commodities are equal to the reciprocal desire of their two owners to exchange them, and in proportion to such desire. As money serves as the common denominator in exchange, these two quantities are equal to a certain quantity of money. Karl Marx does not care to take the facts leading to this conclusion into account. He supposes that this third quantity is the mysterious quantity of labour which is incorporated in the corn and the iron. His great discovery is then complete:—

“The value of each commodity is determined by the quantity of labour expended on and materialised in it, by the working-time necessary, under given social conditions, for its production.”

In Karl Marx' view, value cannot be the relation between the desire and the need of two individuals. He declares that “value only consists in articles of utility, in an object.” Still labour-power is not an object; it is the expression of an effort which may even possibly remain without any result. In order to meet this objection, Karl Marx declares that “man himself, viewed as the impersonation of labour-power, is a natural object,” and further that “the real value of a commodity is not its individual value, but its social value.” Value is defined as “a definite social manner of expressing the amount of labour bestowed upon an object.” Karl Marx takes care to call attention to the importance of this conception of value, “the discovery of value marks an epoch in the history of the development of the human race.” Nevertheless Engels subsequently said that even if Marx' law of value ought not to be considered as inaccurate, it is too vague, and is capable of being laid down with greater precision, and he recognises that it fails to correspond with actual facts. Werner Sombart declares that “the law of value is not an empiric fact, but a fact founded upon ideas, a stimulus to our minds.” Another disciple, Bernstein, looks upon it as a “subjective conception,” and Karl Marx in his third volume recognises that it is entirely removed from reality by saying that “the cost of production includes not only labour-power and work-time, but also the intermediate profit of the capitalist.”

Karl Marx then invokes the aid of formula “B,” called by Lassalle “the iron law of wages,” and transforms it into his theory of “surplus labour.” The value of the working day is determined by the working time necessary for the production of the means of subsistence that are daily required for the production of labour power. If this costs six hours, the labourer must work on an average for six hours. During these six hours he is working for himself, but by working for twelve hours he gives six hours of extra labour or surplus labour or unpaid labour, which constitute the profit of the capitalist, and this is what Karl Marx calls “surplus-value.” Reducing all this to a ratio we have

This proportion determines the rate of surplus-value. The total amount of necessary labour and of surplus-labour forms the grand total of labour-time or in other words a working day.