Note ‡ — Chapter I · HOW TO DISCRIMINATE BETWEEN THE PARTS CONTRIBUTED TO A JOINT PRODUCT BY THE FEW AND BY THE MANY.

It was his complete neglect of these considerations that enabled Karl Marx to impose on himself and others his doctrine that the value of commodities depended on the amount of average labour embodied in them—a doctrine which is the most remarkable intellectual mare’s nest of the century. It is perfectly true that if all other circumstances were always equal—the demand for the commodities in question, the ability with which average labour is directed, and the assistance which the genius of the great inventors gives to it—it is perfectly true that then the amount of average labour embodied in various commodities would be the measure of their value; for labour in that case would be the only variant. But, in reality, the important variants are not average labour, but the ability by which labour is directed. The efficiency of labour itself is practically constant; and for the student of wealth-production the principal force to be studied is the ability of the few, by which the labour of the many is multiplied, and which only exerts itself under special social circumstances.