5. Theory of Value¶
Core Argument¶
Herr Dühring defines wealth as “economic power over men and things,” a formulation that is doubly erroneous. In ancient tribal communities, wealth entailed no domination over men; in class societies, domination over men is exercised through and by virtue of domination over things. Dühring severs this connection to drag wealth into the realm of morality, so that he may explain domination over men by his cherished category of force, terming it “robbery” – a corrupted version of Proudhon.
Dühring then identifies value directly with price, claiming no difference beyond monetary expression. He asserts that value is determined by “the resistance offered by nature” to procuring things – that is, the labour-time necessary for production. Yet this is immediately distorted: if someone produces a useless article, or manufactures by hand what a machine produces more cheaply, his energy yields no value. Dühring introduces a second element: a “distribution value,” a tax surcharge imposed “sword in hand” by a second man blocking access to nature. This makes all value a monopoly price. Either this surcharge cancels out in exchange, or it represents unpaid labour, thereby arriving back at Marx’s concept of surplus-value. Dühring’s examples of monopoly prices – sieges, railways – are not classical determinants of value. Governments attempting to enforce such “distribution value” through maximum prices or artificial exchange rates have invariably failed. Dühring then contradicts himself, stating that all values consist of embodied human energy, so that distribution value is nothing. He finally reduces value to “existence time” and self-maintenance, meaning that value is determined by wages – the position of vulgar economics.
Dühring’s theory thus collapses into wages as production value and profit as distribution value, a tax extorted by capitalist monopoly. This wages-based determination of value was expelled from scientific political economy after Ricardo and survives only in vulgar economics, which treats profit as a higher form of wages. Dühring differs only in calling profit robbery, thereby basing his socialism on the worst vulgar economics. The value a labourer creates in twelve hours has nothing in common with the value of his subsistence, which may embody only three, four, or seven hours of labour. If subsistence costs seven hours, the vulgar theory implies that twelve equals seven. A surplus of product over maintenance costs is the basis of all social progress; this fund has been a privileged class’s possession, and the coming revolution will make it common property. If wages determine value, each worker receives the full value of his product, making exploitation impossible. Any profit added would force wages up correspondingly, restoring the status quo. No surplus could form. But if a surplus exists in capitalists’ hands, it must be the accumulated product of labour over and above wages, meaning that labour-time, not wages, determines value, and profit is part of Marx’s surplus-value.