University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

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THE EEDWOOD. value of any commodity is the result of the human labor and time spent up- on it. Thus reasons the father of Scien- tific Socialism : Let us take two kinds of merchan- dise; e. g., wheat and iron. Whatever be their ratio of exchange it can always be expressed by the equation one bushel of wheat equals X pounds of iron. This means that an equal amount of something common to both is con- tained in two different things. Both are equal to some third quantity which in itself is neither the one nor the oth- er. But each of the two, in as far as it is value and exchange, must be re- solveable into this third element If we abstract the use value of merchandise it retains but one quality, the quality of being the product of la- bor. Nothing remains but the same ghost-like actuality, a mere crystaliza- tion of human labor without distinc- tion A value in use or an ob- ject has value only because human la- bor in the abstract is embodied or ma- terialized in it. But how are we to measure the amount of its value? By the amount of ' value-creating sub- stance, ' i. e., LABOR CONTAINED IN IT. t Marx admits that there can be no exchange value unless the commodity has a use value, as, e. g., a paper shoe. Since it has no use it can have no ex- change value despite the amount of labor that has been expended upon it. tCapital, K. Marx. Vol. 1, p. 3, 4, S. But for all other purposes he held VALUE IN EXCHANGE IS EN- TIRELY INDEPENDENT OF VAL- UE IN USE. As stated above, his con- clusion was that the exchange value, measured by price, of any economic good was determined by the time and labor embodied in it, the standard being the average time taken by the average laborer or as Marx termed it, the so- cially necessary labor time. These few principles of the Marx- ian system are the foundation of his theory of surplus value. Through the discovery of surplus value Marx claim- ed to have exposed the outrageous ex- ploitation of the laboring classes and the manner in which the bourgeiosie were robbing the working man of his own just deserts and hence he deduced the injustice of the present system of production. The principle of surplus value is best demonstrated by a simple example. B. is a manufacturer (or capitalist as you choose to call him). He makes, let us say, hats, socially useful objects and whose exchange value, according to Marx, is the result of the time and la- bor spent upon them. B. sells his year- ly output for $90,000.00. Let us say for the sake of illustration that one- third of this amount or $30,000.00 was required for raw materials, machinery and incidental expenses. Another one- third or $30,000.00 additional was paid to labor for service rendered. Now this leave a balance of $30,000.00 clear prof- it for the capitalist. Marx called this

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THE REDWOOD. lows that the only way to wealth for the individual is through his own per- sonal labor. His work will not be forc- ed upon him but will be necessary in order for him to live. They imply also the abolition of private enterprise, of commerce and industry, of banks and financial corporations. The central aim and pivotal point of Socialism is distributive justice. While it seeks to increase production by more efficient organization it makes its cen- tral thought the JUST DISTRIBU- TION OF THE PRODUCT. In what this just distribution con- sists Socialists themselves differ. Some advocate a distribution according to real needs, others say that justice de- mands distribution according to the merit of the service rendered and still others say that equality meets the de- mands of justice. With these minor divisions we need not concern our selves. Suffice it that all are unani- mous in their opinion that the present manner of distribution is unjust and therefore they advocate a radical change. To reduce our idea of Socialism to a concise statement we may now say that SOCIALISM IS THE PROPOSAL THAT ALL PROPERTY SHOULD BE NATIONALLY OWNED THAT IT MAY MORE JUSTLY BE DIS- TRIBUTED. It rests upon two as- sumptions; first, that the present man- ner, of distribution is unjust; second that Socialism is the only remedy for the frightful human calamities which attend the present order of society. For the first of these two assump- tions Karl Marx, the Socialist philo- sopher and founder of the system, brought forward in the main one great argument. With it he attempted to show that the capitalists by an unjust system of production were deriving their immense profits from the unpaid, stolen, exploited labor of the working man. This argument was no other than the famous Marxian theory of value and surplus value, which Social- ists are wont to propound as an unas- sailable axiom. It is the basic doctrine of Socialism. The knowledge of the theory of value and surplus value is the beginning of all true Socialistic knowl- edge. Following the English economists, Adam Smith (1776) and David Ricar- do (1817), Marx distinguished value into value-in-use and value-in-ex- change. Value-in-use, he said, is the capability of an economic good to sat- isfy some human want. Value-in-ex- change is the ratio in which commo- dities are exchangable for one another and is measured by price. Now Adam Smith and the orthodox economists following him had conclud- ed that the production of wealth was the result of land, capital and labor, thus recognizing labor as the only hu- man element involved. From this prern- ise Marx concluded that the exchange Cf. Indust. Rev.

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THE REDWOOD. remaining portion surplus value. The entire $90,000.00 was a result of time and labor, he said, therefore the $30,- 000 which the capitalist took was pro- duced and earned by the laborers them- selves. The capitalist had worked not more than four hours a day, yet by an unfair system of distribution he confis- cated one-third of the entire earnings. Marx proposed to put an end to this un- just system by placing the means or tools of production in the hands of the government and to distribute this sur- plus value among the workers who cre- ated it. Labor-time was to be the stan- dard and in the case of a professional worker or skilled laborer, he would re- ceive according to the time spent in education or apprenticeship. The principle that all wealth is a re- sult of the labor of the average ma- jority still forms the basis of popular Socialism. Therefore to this funda- mental tenet let us turn our attention. The theory of the injustice of the ap- propriation of surplus value and the So- cialistic conclusion of the exploitation of the working classes, rests directly upon -the Marxian theory of value. To assail the foundation then will be to de- stroy the superstructure simultaneous- ly. Marx, it will be recalled, main- tained that exchange value was entire- ly independent of use value except inas- much as no article could be sold unless it had some value and use. But for all other purposes the two were distinct. Thus the exchange value, i. e., the price the good brings is determined solely by the labor crystallized in that article. But let us suppose that a merchant brings from the forest of South Amer- ica several shiploads of different kinds of wood to some European port. In the forests of South America the wood has no exchange value, for any one there may have all he wants by the mere taking. At the European port, the wood immediately has a high ex- change value. Now, according to Marx, the standard of this value will be the amount of labor, time, -expense and cost of transportation which has brought the wood to the present port. But this cannot be, for then all the wood, con- veyed would sell at the same price, which is far from being the case. Cedar and mahogany, abstracting from the labor expended upon it will always bring a greater exchange value or price than pine or birch. Thus Social- ists must admit that USE plays just as important a part in the fixing of ex- change value as labor and time. In fact a general estimate of the use- fulness of an article will administer more toward the fixing of exchange val- ue than the labor embodied in it. A good bottle of wine will always bring a higher price than a bottle of poor wine despite the fact that more time and labor might have been spent in produc- ing the latter. Why does fruit from the same orchard and the same trees sell at a variety of prices? Or coal from the same mine? Because utility is the determining factor, entirely in- Adapted from Soc, V. Cathrein.