Historical materialism and the economics of Karl Marx

by Benedetto Croce

This interpretation, in its general sense, was accepted by Engels, in an article written some months before his death and published posthumously. To Engels it appeared that 'it could not be condemned as inaccurate, but that, nevertheless, it was too vague and might be expressed with greater precision.'[17]

The acute and courteous remarks on the theory of value, published lately in an article in the Journal des Economistes by an able French Marxian, Sorel, indicate a movement in the same direction. In these remarks he acknowledges that there is no way of passing from Marx's theory to actual phenomena of economic life, and that, although it may offer elucidation, in a somewhat limited sense, it does not appear further that it could ever explain, in the scientific meaning of the word.[18]

And now too Professor Labriola, in a hasty glance at the same subject, referring clearly to Sombart, and partly agreeing and partly criticising, writes: 'the theory of value does not denote an empirical factum nor does it express a merely logical proposition, as some have imagined; but it is the typical premise without which all the rest would be unthinkable.'[19]

Labriola's phrase appears to me, in fact, somewhat more accurate than Sombart's; who, moreover, shows himself dissatisfied with his own term, like someone who has not yet a quite definite concept in view, and hence cannot find a satisfactory phrase. 'Conceptual fact,' 'logical fact' expresses much too little since it is evident that all sciences are interwoven from logical facts, that is from concepts. Marx's labour-value is not only a logical generalisation, it is also a fact conceived and postulated as typical, i.e. something more than a mere logical concept. Indeed it has not the inertia of the abstract but the force of a concrete fact,[20] which has in regard to capitalist society, in Marx's investigation, the function of a term of comparison, of a standard, of a type.[21]

This standard or type being postulated, the investigation, for Marx, takes the following form. Granted that value is equal to the labour socially necessary, it is required to show with what divergencies from this standard the prices of commodities are fixed in capitalist society, and how labour-power itself acquires a price and becomes a commodity. To speak plainly, Marx stated the problem in unappropriate language; he represented this typical value itself, postulated by him as a standard, as being the law governing the economic phenomena of capitalist society. And it is the law, if he likes, but in the sphere of his conceptions, not in economic reality. We may conceive the divergencies from a standard as the revolt of reality when confronted by this standard which we have endowed with the dignity of law.

From a formal point of view there is nothing absurd about the investigation undertaken by Marx. It is a usual method of scientific analysis to regard a phenomenon not only as it exists, but also as it would be if one of its factors were altered, and, in comparing the hypothetical with the real phenomenon, to conceive the first as diverging from the second, which is postulated as fundamental, or the second as diverging from the first, which is postulated in the same manner. If I build up by deductive reasoning the moral rules which develop in two social groups which are at war one against another, and if I show how they differ from the moral rules which develop in a state of peace, I should be making something analogous to the comparison worked out by Marx. Nor would there be great harm (although the expression would be neither fortunate nor accurate) in saying, in a figurative sense, that the law of the moral rules in time of war is the same as that of the rules in time of peace, modified to the new conditions, and altered in a way which seems, ultimately, inconsistent with itself. As long as he confines himself to the limits of his hypothesis Marx proceeds quite correctly. Error could come in only when he or others confuse the hypothetical with the real, and the manner of conceiving and of judging with that of existing. As long as this mistake is avoided, the method is unassailable.

But the formal justification is insufficient: we need another. With a formally correct method results may be obtained which are meaningless and unimportant, or mere mental tricks may be performed. To set up an arbitrary standard of comparison, to compare, and deduce, and to end by establishing a series of divergencies from this standard; to what will this lead? It is then, the standard itself which needs justification: i.e. we need to decide what meaning and importance it may have for us.

This question too, although not stated exactly in this way, has occurred to Marx's critics; and an answer to it has been already given some time ago and by many, by saying that the equivalence of value and labour is an ideal of social ethics, a moral ideal. But nothing could be imagined more mistaken in itself and farther from Marx's thought than this interpretation. What moral inference can ever be drawn from the premiss that value is equal to the labour socially necessary? It we reflect a little, absolutely none. The establishment of this fact tells us nothing about the needs of the society, which needs will make necessary one or another ethical-legal system of property and of methods of distribution. Value may certainly equal labour, nevertheless special historical conditions will make necessary society organised in castes or in classes, divided into governing and governed, rulers and ruled; with a resulting unequal distribution of the products of labour. Value may certainly equal labour; but even supposing that fresh historical conditions ever make possible the disappearance of society organised in classes and the advent of a communistic society, and even supposing that in this society distribution could take place according to the quantity of labour contributed by each person, this distribution would still not be a deduction from the established equivalence between value and labour, but a standard adopted for special reasons of social convenience.[22] Nor can it be said that such an equivalence supplies in itself an idea of perfect justice (even though unrealisable), since the criterion of justice has no relation to the difference often due to purely natural causes, in the ability to do more or less social labour and to produce a greater or smaller value. Thus neither a rule of abstract justice nor one of convenience and social utility can be derived from the equivalence between value and labour. Rules of either kind can only be based on consideration of a quite different grade from that of a simple economic equation.

Sombart, avoiding this vulgar confusion, has been better advised in looking for the meaning of the standard set up by Marx in the nature of society itself, and apart from our moral judgments. Thus he says that labour is the economic fact of greater objective importance, and that value, in Marx's view, is nothing 'if not the economic expression of the fact of the socially productive power of labour, as the basis of economic existence.'

But this investigation appears to me to be merely begun and not yet worked out to a conclusion; and if I might suggest wherein it needs completion, I should remark that it is necessary to attempt to give clearness and precision to this word objective, which is either ambiguous or metaphorical. What is meant by an economically objective fact? Do not these words suggest rather a mere presentiment of a concept instead of the distinct vision of this concept itself?