The Jevonian Criticism of Marx. A REJOINDER. MR. BERNARD SHAW'S brilliant but good-natured "com ments on my article on the theory of value seem to invite a few words of reply from me. COW." I will, however, make them very short. After admirably illustrating the fact that to each individual the utility of beef runs daily and weekly through enormous variations, Mr. Shaw declares that this does not affect the exchange value of the article. No more it does, if the variations counteract each other. If they are all in the same direction at the same time they do affect the exchange value-as Mr. Shaw would know were he a butcher or a housekeeper. But at any rate, says Mr. Shaw, the exchange value cannot rise above the "cost of catching, killing and cooking a Had I Mr. Shaw's pen in my fingers I could give my readers a delectable picture of the indignant housekeeper defeating the extortionate butcher by sallying forth to catch, kill and cook a cow" for dinner, but I will not enter upon an unequal combat in badinage with Mr. Shaw. I presume he means that the price of beef cannot rise above the cost of bringing it into the market. No more it can, permanently. Temporarily it can, and often does. The only reason why it cannot do so permanently is because as long as labour can produce a higher average utility by bringing beef into the market than by taking any other direction it will put itself to that special task by preference and so will reduce the final utility of beef by supplying the want of it down to a lower point. 66 I am quite at a loss to know what Mr. Shaw means by saying that "" 'If the labour necessary to produce the beef be halved or doubled, neither the mass nor the final degree of utility in the beef will be altered one jot; and yet the value will be halved or doubled." Unless and until both the total and the final utilities are altered the exchange value will remain exactly the same. It is only by producing more beef, and thus at the same time increasing its total and lowering its final utility, that the increased facilities of beef-making can produce any effect on the price whatever. As for Mr. Shaw's extortionate sheikh he simply illustrates my contention that some of the consumers always get the whole, and Vol III. No. 4. New Series. M every consumer may sometimes get a part of the commodity he consumes at something less than it is worth to him (the first mouthful of beef costs no more than the twentieth), but that all pay the price represented by the minimum or final utility of the last increment to that one of the consumers, to whom it has, relatively to other commodities, the least utility. Similar remarks apply to Mr. Shaw's remaining criticisms; but I should like to say a word in elucidation of my statement that when the supply of any commodity is increased the successive increments meet an ever less urgent want, and are in fact less and less useful. I admit that in a certain sense this language is misleading, for if we are speaking of absolute utilities the presumption is that if the supply of beef is increased till it falls to 6d. a pound, the final increments which get into the workman's alimentary canal are more useful than previous ones, the fate of which we need not pursue beyond the servants' hall. But I never compare absolute utilities and I do not see how such a comparison could be instituted on any scientific basis. All I contend for is that if yesterday no one had a watch except those to whom a watch was as useful as anything that could be got for £15, and if to-day a number of men possess watches to whom they are only as useful as other things which could be got for £10, the new watches are relatively to other things less useful than the former ones were. Mr. Shaw's youthful experiences about x and a are so highly instructive that I cannot refrain from dwelling upon them for a moment. His friend induced him to "let x=a,' and Mr. Shawnot expecting that x would take any mean advantage of the permission-granted the request. But he did not understand that in letting x-a he was also letting x-a=0, and the proof (of the proposition, 2=1) that "followed with rigorous exactness," assumed that x-a did not equal o. Mr. Shaw arrived at the sapient conclusion that there was "a screw loose somewhere "-not in his own reasoning powers, but— "in the algebraic art ;" and thenceforth renounced mathematical reasoning in favour of the literary method which enables a clever man to follow equally fallacious arguments to equally absurd conclusions without seeing that they are absurd. This is the exact difference between the mathematical and literary treatment of the pure theory of political economy. Only a single word, in conclusion, on the importance of this controversy. It is not a mere question of abstract reasoning (although, if it were, that could hardly be urged in its disparagement by an admirer of Marx). It affects the whole system of economics, and more particularly Marx's economics. In admitted contradiction to apparent facts, and without (at present) any attempt to remove the apparent contradiction, Marx by sheer logic attempts to force us into the admission that "profits," interest," and "rent," must have their origin in the" surplus-value" that results from purchasing "labourforce" at its value and selling wares at their value. The key-stone of the arch is the theory of value adopted by Marx, and I have tried to show that it is not sound. In doing so I have found an unexpected but powerful ally in Mr. John Carruthers, whose 99 66 elaborate and thoughtful essay on "The Industrial Mechanism of a Socialist Society," shows the phenomena of "profits" reappearing, in a modified form, in communal industry. My own rather clumsy illustrations of the varying utilities and values of "coats and hats," etc., laboured under the disadvantage of requiring my readers to imagine the wants of society in part at least supplied successively, not contemporaneously. Mr. Carruthers escapes this, and shows how in a communal industry the price (though he would not say the "exchange" value) of each article depends on its final utility, and that it is only when, as a consequence of the indications thus afforded, labour has been properly apportioned amongst the industries, that prices are apportioned to labour cost. PHILIP H. WICKSTEED. The Coming of Liberty. Ho brothers, do ye hear her? Her advent draweth nigh, Thrones totter and are shaken, and in vain the tyrant grieves, Ho brothers, will ye aid her? for her purpose cannot fail, From amid the din of cities, from amid the toil of fields, Her sign is like Jehovah's, when his race from bondage fled, The great dead sang songs of her in the dim and mournful years'Men would beat their swords to ploughshares, and to pruning hooks their spears.' And the greatest would be humble, and the first would be the last. 'When hers would be the kingdoms, and the days of evil past.' She knows her own true servants, she would have you with her best; Ye have the power to help her, and her helpers will be blest. Arise, the world will bless you, tho' it give you hatred now, Arise, altho' men mock you, tho' they crown with thorns your brow, Arise, and battle for her, till her foes be overthrown; As yours will be the struggle, so the glory yours alone. F. TREVETHen Brice. Charles Louis Delescluze. BUT few facts are at hand to enable one to write even a sketch of this great and heroic life. Born at Dreux in 1809, Delescluze in his youth studied law at Paris and abandoned it because it was, as he said, the "logic of rascals to shield murder and theft." In 1834 he underwent the first of his long list of imprisonments, for the part he took in the April revolution, and in the following year in Belgium he obtained the editorship of the Courier de Charleroi. He returned to Paris, where he founded a journal called the Revolution Democratique et Sociale, which brought him fifteen months' imprisonment and twenty thousand francs fine. After a long period of liberty, nearly eight years, he was condemned to transportation by the High Court of Justice sitting at Versailles, but the condemnation was given in his absence in England, where he remained until 1853. On his return, he was immediately imprisoned at Mazas, transferred arterwards to BelleIsle, and finally to Cayenne. These sojourns lasted until 1858, when the amnesty permitted him to return to France, where he made haste to bring out another new journal, Le Reveil, which earned him fines and imprisonments with great rapidity, three of each within twelve months. In the month of February, 1871, he was elected deputy by a large number of votes; and later, when the Assembly went to Bordeaux, he sat there for some time, and then gave in his resignation, in order to take part in the Commune as delegate at the Ministry of War. Well and faithfully did he perform his duty in the days of siege and struggle that followed, and when the cause was lost he would not seek safety in flight. At the Chateau d'Eau seven enormous barricades had been erected; for thirteen hours they had sustained a most terrible attack from every direction. The people, profiting by the lesson of the previous days, had taken possession of the houses in front of the works; but the soldiers climbed upon the roofs of the houses, advanced from one to another, and poured a destructive fire into the ranks of the people behind the works. Delescluze proceeded along the Boulevard Prince Eugene, with the calm. indifference of a stoic philosopher. Shells and bullets were falling |