Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/24

 the production of commodities, or better, of capitalist production, were entirely suppressed.

This utopia has struck its roots deep and wide in the thought of the modern middle class—real or ideal. This is demonstrated by the fact that already in 1831 it had been systematically developed by John Gray; that at this period it had been practically tried, theoretically expounded, in England, proclaimed as the most recent truth in 1842 by Rodbertus in Germany, in 1846 by Proudhon in France, and again published by Rodbertus as the solution of the social question, and, so to speak, his social testament in 1871; and in 1884 it receives the adhesion of the sequel evolved under the name of Rodbertus to exploit Prussian State Socialism.

The criticism of this utopia has been made so completely by Marx, as well against Proudhon as against Gray (Cf. appendix 2 of this work), that I need only devote myself here to some remarks on the special form that Rodbertus has adapted to formulate and express it.

As we have said: Rodbertus accepts the traditional economic concepts under the exact form in which they have been transmitted to him by the economists. He does not make the slightest attempt to verify them. Value is for him "the quantitative valuation of one thing relatively to others, this valuation being taken for measure." This none too rigorous definition gives us at the most an idea of what value appears almost to be, but does not say absolutely what it is. But as it is all that Rodbertus is able to tell us about value, it is comprehensible that he seeks for a measure of value outside of value. After having at random, and without method, twisted use-value and exchange-value about under a hundred aspects with that power of abstraction so infinitely admired by M. Adolphe Wagner, he arrives at