Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/447

 RVmWS 425 the more serious as long and roundabout forms of production come to tke the place of a production for the year within the year or for the day within the day. The progress of civilization simplifies the individual's share in the work of production and multiplies the separate processes thereof ;mhenee results a close dependence of the individual on society. Now the sum of products is [objectively] equal to the sum of the wants they supply, and the wants often follow the products as well as the products the wants; hence the separate items of the whole sum of wants (or whole Demand)stand to each other in a constantly varying relation, which we call Mue. Mue (in our author's sense) is ' the measure of the power of a product to satisfy a want, compared with the like power on the par of other products' (p. 96, where a footnote shows that we are to understand value as ' social value,' or value for society viewed collectively). ' Mue measures the quota which a product supplies to the collective demand of a community' (45). Mue thus (as presently appears) depends [ob- jectively] on labour, service and reward, work done and want satisfied being always [obj ,ctively] in correspondence (see e.g. 38, 39, 47). In the republic of letters a man may no doubt use his words in any way he chooses; but all uses are not equally expedient, and the above definition of value seems very inexpedient indeed. Still, as it is not essential to the author's argument, we need not linger over it, but go on to his really cardinal propositions. We are told that, with the establishment of private property and private (as opposed to common) management of business, service and reward become disjoined and disproportionate (74 &c.). ' The characteristic mark of the system of labour for wages is that the workman's theoretically assignable share (ideelen Antkzil) in the finished article, or, what is the same thing, his socially proportionate recompense for his work, as distinguished from his stipulated payment for the same, is annexed by another than himself,' i.e. by the owner of the finished article (79). As in Karl Marx, so in Wittelsh6fer; profits come from surplus production made possible by the industrial growth of a society, but they fall to a few instead of all members of sid society, owing to the pressure which the possession of propery enables the few to put on the penniless many. All the criticisms that have been made against the'Exploitation theory' of Wsges and Profits fall to be made against Mr. Wittelsh6fer's re-state- nent of them. His book is, in one sense, not controversial, for it mskes no reply to criticisms of these and other positions, although it is clear from some parts of it that the author was perfectly aware of the said criticisms (see e.g. 26, 48, 94 n., 208 n.). In another sense the book is very controversial indeed; it advances positions that are sadly open to controversy. Dr. Bhm Bawerk's Positive I'heory of Ieres was in the hands of our author before his own work was finally printed (see p. 908 n.); but we are roundly told (without any refutation of the arguments of B6hm Bawerk)that 'objectively there is no such thing as interest on capital' (216). Professor Vieser's in- genious arguments, to show how the leading economic relations would