Workmen's advocate., 1890-12-06
What Karl Marx Discovered in ro-
 litical Economy.

$. b, F., 331 Strand, London, on 5Ju- day evenings during Novcmher was very well attended and il k evident that there i, growing anxiety in Great Britain to understand thoroughly the scientific pohuca. rruuomy which torms the basis of the Nor'al.DrmocratlG prop. acand1 and hol!s together th" Social Democratic party in every country whatever difference of opuiou lm1c may be as to lar'Ys Unfortunately the "Profts-ors comnur to protr~e-thcIr ignorance. Prd. Alfred Marshall of Cambridge, for Instance, takes, m more than one place, Karl NarAs distinctions aud tcrmiholo2y without 0rknowiedgc- meat, But he js uuihlr tp makr any important u-r ut them 70 anxious i, he to pro,r what il superior person he a iu the author ot "tAptaI,' There the ideas lie "IIhe humps of marI on q barren sul cl umMTiug that which IL ls not in their power to ftruiz", Yet the Pro lessor has tn" imprrtiueuC" in his yer bose and itcou7pqdcnt though well. meaning "lnucipcA of Economies Opp. GlJ 2W tu sheer at the great thinker from whom h" pIagarI~cs, whilst show. ing hIs Iucaparlty to comprehend him. This being 70, We think it well to print here from the second German volume of the "Capltai", which has not yet been translated, what Friedrich Engels claims for .hls great co-worker--Ihe Aristotle of the Nineteenth Century:--
 "iue existence of that portion of the value of products which we now cah surplus Value tMrhrwerlh), was csiab lished long before Marx; likewise was 1t stated with more or less CirarneSS what It was constituted of, namely from the product of labor, for which the apprO priatur has paId no equivalent. Further than that no one got, "Omr-thc rias hical bourgeois onUmlSta~~cXamlncd al the utmost the proportions m which the product of IAhUr is divided between the labOrrr and tI!e owner of the means of production. Nlhrrn- the SOrIaalsts-- considered this division lnrqUimhlc, and endraVOr"d to put au end to the in. justice. Both remained m the grip of the CrunrmICal catrgUrlrs a9 they found them.
 "Thcn Marx came to inc front And precisely and in ducct opposition to his foreruuners Where they saw som tjun he saw only q problem. In order to determine what eurpIus value was he had to determine what value, Wus RirarIo's theory of value had first of all to undergo crtIclam Marx therefore examined labOr m It's Vauc.crcatmg quality ana for the first tune established Whdt labor, and why, and how 1t cOrst- tutes value, and that yaue generally is nothing but cystalhzrd labor of Mis description.
 Marx then examined the relation be- tween commodity and money, and proved how and why by reason of it's inherent Fecullanty ut value cOmmu- dltles and the exchange of commodities must develop the an(aGonlsm between commodities and money: his theory Ct money founded on thls is the first com, pIete theory now universally accepted. He examined the conversion of money into capital, and proved that it rested on the purchase and sale of labor power - Marshall uses this phrase,
 w hen he thus substituted labor power, the value-Constltuting entity, he solved at a blow one of the difficulties which had wrecked RlCardOs school; the mpCsMblIlty of reconciing the simultaneous exchange of Capital and Labor with the Mcardian law of the estimation of value by laUor, When he 0unstated the distinction between con. stant and variable capital, he first was enabled thereby to set forth the process of the formation of surplus value in it's actual operation to the smallest detail, and ther, with to clear up what none of his predecessors had been able to explain. He also pstab ilshed distinction m capital itself, which gives the key to the most com pliCatrd problems. He ezamlncd sur plus value further, and found it to con sist of two forms, absolute and relative surplus |aIue, and proved how these different forms have both of them played decisive parts i'll the historical development of capital On this basis of surplus value he developed the only reasonable theory of wages We have, and gave for the first tune d sketch ot capitalist accumulation, and an expo sllion of its historical tendency
 Beyond this Marx eas the first 10 show that labor itself has and can have no value. Like weight, 1t may measure the relative ponderosity this case the relative value-of different Eoods with regard to one another, but like weight. m the abstract, 1t has no value. IL is this abstract social labor embodied in commoditics-artiClea for social use produced under the capltali,tsyst for exchange and protit-which comes be hini them when they are exchanged and establishes their value relatively to