The Socialism of to-day

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 835096955

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-28834

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Laveleye, Émile de

Title:: The Socialism of to-day

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Field & Tuer

Year of publication:: 1884

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XLIV, 331 S.)

Collection:: Economics Books

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38 THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. active equalizing agent for profits, wages, rent, and interest. This is reserved, it appears, for the second volume, never published ; but this method of successive analyses, admissible in mathe matics, where one speculates about abstract data, gives entirely false results when applied to Political Economy, which is con cerned with facts. To affect to give a just idea of economic phenomena, without speaking of competition, which is in general their impelling force, is like attempting to explain the terrestrial system while omitting gravitation, which is its moving power. Another error of Marx consists in asserting that capital is dead labour, which revives and grows fat only at the expense of living labour. Without doubt the products of former labour applied to a new production—for instance, machines—are not endowed with life. In themselves they are inert ; but if, owing to them, the same muscular efforts can produce more articles of utility, may we not say that they are productive ? A man armed with a steel axe will do ten times more work than a savage with his flint axe. Both tools are evidently inert ; but if with the former we obtain much more produce than with the latter, ought we not to put it down to the superiority of the steel instrument ? In order to prove that capital does not produce value, Marx shows that if by means of a new machine one can manufacture twice as many articles, each of these articles being worth only half as much as before, the total value remains the same. This is plausible, but false ; for the goal to attain is the multiplication of useful articles quite irrespective of their money value. The value in use is the important point. If with a better instrument I obtain twice as many goods, I am really twice as rich ; for my comforts being doubled, I have produced a double amount of real value. As Bastiat well remarks, whenever we change “ onerous values for gratuitous values ” humanity is enriched. If all the necessaries of existence were as abundant as air and water, their intrinsic value, that is to say, their capacity to satisfy our wants, would be in no way diminished. They would exchange, it is true, against very much less money, and their money value

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