MARX REVIVED.
The Labour Theory of Value in Karl Marx. By H. W. B. Joseph. (Oxford University Press. 4s. 6d. net.) As is well known, Marx contended among other things (deriving his inspiration from Ricardo) that the workers are exploited because the commodities which they receive in return for their labour embody less labour than they exert, and are therefore of less value than that which they have created. No better answer to this contention, that the workers have the sole right to the produce of their labour, is likely to be found than the old simple one which carries men's thoughts back to primal conditions. It has several forms, but it is probably better to quote the one used by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. "A man can go into the forest," he writes in the Socialist Movement, "and tear boughs off trees with his hands for his fires, but he cannot fell trees without an axe of some kind, which is capital. Capital, therefore, has its value, a simple fact which means that under the freest economic conditions interest will be paid." Since the British Socialistic movement is not Marxian in character and, indeed, has been prominent in exposing many Alarxian fallacies, Mr. Joseph in reissuing these revised lectures delivered in 1913 is flogging a horse which, if not actually dead, is very nearly so. He is apparently aware that the subject is not a burning one, but he also believes that there is a widespread acceptance among the "labouring classes" of the mischievous Mandan theory referred to above. The tendency of certain guildsmen to refer to the capitalist as a thief may have produced this unfortunate result, but Mr. Joseph's refutations are hardly simple enough for the labour- ing classes to understand. After an introduction Mr. Joseph sets out Marx's Theory of Value, and then proceeds to deal effectively with the inconsistency between theory and fact. He is able to show that things have value because men want them, and that it is this, and not the labour in them, which is the fundamental fact. "Since different men want different
things, and want the same things in different orders of prefer- ence, there is no absolute value." In fact, all that is needed to refute Marx is the application of common sense, for as Mr. MacDonald pronounced fifteen years ago : "His philo- sophy belonged to an old generation ; his logical view of the State is unreal : the words which he used, together with the conceptions which they expressed so accurately, are inadequate in relation to modern thought and misleading for practical conduct."
The heading of the final chapter, "Some Morals and a Conclusion," leads to the hope that we may be entering a field whose grass is less worn. Mr. Joseph rightly says that the interest which the theory of value " excites " (though "excites," we fear, is a little generous) is .due to men's con- viction that the economic arrangements of society ought to be very different from what they are. He thinks we should do well to devote our attention to the principle of a living wage which "does not involve the claim to equal shares of wealth, nor even that we should abolish altogether the economi- cally unproductive class (which is by no means identical with the socially mischievous or useless)." The criticisms of State Socialism in this chapter are interesting, and we look forward to a work by Mr. Joseph dealing with a more urgent subject.
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