CORRSESPONDENCE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIV, Issue 138, 7 December 1907, Page 11

CORRSESPONDENCE.

& _ LABOUR VALUE. TO TUB I.DITOH. Sir,— Your loader of 'Am 2Cth ir.st., headed '■lac. JLiabouiM alue Fallacy," deserveb a word of eommoiiuaricn from all Socialists, it holds up to bitter Eeoni the present general r.oiicn of value — viz., that the value of a Hung is tho prioo you can oblam tor it. Tnus, if a- man dying of thirst is compelled (socially wo are all under compulsion) to pay - a thousand pounds for a pint of water, then the true value of a pint of water is a (thousand pounds. If a fool is ready to pay ten thousand pounds for a bit ot shining stone to hang on hu wife's neck, then tho true value ot a bit of shining sicr.o is' ten thousand pounds. • Thus, ivuo value consists in whatever you can compel a desperate man cr cajole a fool into giving tor it, and tho measure ot value is the measure of compulsion or folly.' As you say, what tho article may have cost to produce has nothing to do with it. Glorious! By holding up this principle* you please two classes of readers, the dullards who take jou and their present standards seriously, and the keen-wilted persons who enjoy the joke with you.--I am, etc., EOWAKD TKEGEAR. Wellirgton, 29th November, 1007. Sir, —In your nib loader on Iho alleged "Labour-value Fallacy" you state that intelligent Socialists have dropped it. We Socialists dissent from this conclusion. As to tho intellectual calibre of your farmer's witness, who said Drains, net labour, produces the product, did ho and do you moan to suggest that Iho operalion of thought involves no labour — that wealth could bo produced by brains without exercise — without, "labour?" "Is your gold and silver ewes and lambs?" "I cannot fell," said "Shylock" ; "I make it breed as well!" t The mental worker is only another class, his brains cannot, work in a vacuum, they have to bo fed. To realise on them ho requires (1) raw energy — a. previous stock of food, which required labour 10 produce ; (2) immaterial or refined energy — a previous stock of ideas, which also required gonerically labour. Yov> state the theory of Morse correctly in one sense, but incorrectly in another : because you do not state'_ tho _ deductions, implications, and amplifications which aire necessary parts or corrollaries. You do timL logically develop it. It is quite compatible with Marx's conception of labour-value lo say that labour itself produces no wealth, or very Hi tin, because a partner is always required. As Marx puts it : "The land is the mother and labour tho father ; and, to secure any progeny — i.p., wealth — there must necessarily be proper fertilisation." The theory of Marx is logical, not a, rigmarole of some pseudo-economist, as you construe it, full of illusions, fallacies, and contradictions. — I am, etc., T.A.E. Wellington, 50lh November, 1907.