Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx | Page 4

either Marx was an incapable bungler or that he thought
the fact that some things have economic value and are yet not the
product of labour irrelevant to his argument because he was talking of
economic value in two senses, firstly in the sense of price, and secondly
in a peculiar sense of his own. This indeed is borne out by his
distinction of value and price. Croce developing this hint, suggests that
the importance of Marx's theory lies in a comparison between a
capitalist society and another abstract economic society in which there
are no commodities on which labour is not expended, and no monopoly.
We thus have two abstract societies, the capitalist society which though
abstract is very largely actualised in modern civilisation, and another
quite imaginary economic society of unfettered competition, which is
continually assumed by the classical economist, but which, as Marx
said, could only exist where there was no private property in capital, i.e.
in the collectivist state.
Now in a society of that kind in which there was no monopoly and
capital was at everyone's disposal equally, the value of commodities
would represent the value of the labour put into them, and that value
might be represented in Wits of socially necessary labour time. It
would still have to be admitted that an hour of one man's labour might
be of much greater value to the community than two hours of another
man, but that Marx has already allowed for. The unit of socially
necessary labour time is an abstraction, and the hour of one man might
contain two or any number of such abstract units of labour time. What
Marx has done is to take the individualist economist at his word: he has
accepted the notion of an economic society as a number of competing
individuals. Only he has insisted that they shall start fair and therefore
that they shall have nothing to buy or sell but their labour. The
discrepancy between the values which would exist in such a society and
actual prices represent the disturbance created by the fact that actual

society is not a society of equal competitors, but one in which certain
competitors start with some kind of advantage or monopoly.
If this is really the kernel of Marx's doctrine, it bears a close relation to
a simpler and more familiar contention, that in a society where free
economic competition holds sway, each man gets what he deserves, for
his income represents the sum that society is prepared to pay for his
services, the social value of his work. In this form the hours worked are
supposed to be uniform, and the differences in value are taken to
represent different amounts of social service. In Marx's argument the
social necessity is taken as uniform, and the difference in value taken to
represent differences in hours of work. While the main abstract
contention remains the same, most of those who argue that in a system
of unfettered economic competition most men get what they deserve,
rather readily ignore the existence of monopoly, and assume that this
argument justifies the existing distribution of wealth. The chief purpose
of Marx's argument is to emphasise the difference between such an
economic system and a capitalist society. He is here, as so often,
turning the logic of the classical economists against themselves, and
arguing that the conditions under which a purely economic distribution
of wealth could take place, could only exist in a community where
monopoly had been completely abolished and all capital collectivised.
Croce maintains that Marx's theory of value is economic and not moral.
Yet it is hard to read Marx and certainly Marxians without finding in
them the implication that the values produced in such an economic
society would be just. If that implication be examined, we come on an
important difficulty still remaining in this theory. The contention that in
a system of unfettered economic competition, men get the reward they
deserve, assumes that it is just that if one man has a greater power of
serving society than another he should be more highly rewarded for his
work. This the individualist argument with which we compared Marx's
assumes without question. But the Marxian theory of value is
frequently interpreted to imply that amount of work is the only claim to
reward. For differences in value it is held are created by differences in
the amount of labour. But the word amount may here be used in two
senses. When men say that the amount of work a man does should

determine a man's reward; they commonly mean that if one man works
two hours and another one, the first ought to get twice the reward of the
second. 'Amount ' here means the actual time spent in labour. But in
Marx's