Now in a society of that kind in which there was no monopoly and capital was at everyone's disposal equally, the value of commodities would represent the value of the labour put into them, and that value might be represented in units of socially necessary labour time. It would still have to be admitted that an hour of one man's labour might be of much greater value to the community than two hours of another man, but that Marx has already allowed for. The unit of socially necessary labour time is an abstraction, and the hour of one man might contain two or any number of such abstract units of labour time. What Marx has done is to take the individualist economist at his word: he has accepted the notion of an economic society as a number of competing individuals. Only he has insisted that they shall start fair and therefore that they shall have nothing to buy or sell but their labour. The discrepancy between the values which would exist in such a society and actual prices represent the disturbance created by the fact that actual society is not a society of equal competitors, but one in which certain competitors start with some kind of advantage or monopoly. If this is really the kernel of Marx's doctrine, it bears a close relation to a simpler and more familiar contention, that in a society where free economic competition holds sway, each man gets what he deserves, for his income represents the sum that society is prepared to pay for his services, the social value of his work. In this form the hours worked are supposed to be uniform, and the differences in value are taken to represent different amounts of social service. In Marx's argument the social necessity is taken as uniform, and the difference in value taken to represent differences in hours of work. While the main abstract contention remains the same, most of those who argue that in a system of unfettered economic competition most men get what they deserve, rather readily ignore the existence of monopoly, and assume that this argument justifies the existing distribution of wealth. The chief purpose of Marx's argument is to emphasise the difference between such an economic system and a capitalist society. He is here, as so often, turning the logic of the classical economists against themselves, and arguing that the conditions under which a purely economic distribution of wealth could take place, could only exist in a community where monopoly had been completely abolished and all capital collectivised.