sociological, if it is preferred. He wonders that I speak of a _working society_, and asks: 'As opposed to what?' 'Perhaps to the saints in paradise?' But I have pointed out the opposition between a hypothetical _working society_,--_i.e._ such that all its goods are produced by labour,--and a society, economic certainly, but not exclusively working, because it enjoys goods given by nature, as well as the products of labour. The saints in paradise form another irrelevant jest. I called Marx's concept of _surplus-value a concept of difference_; and Labriola reproaches me for not being able 'to say exactly what I understand by these words.' And yet I am not in the habit of speaking or writing when I do not exactly know what I want to say; and here I believe that I have clearly expressed a thought which I had exceedingly clearly in my mind. Let us take two types of society: type A consisting of 100 persons, who, with capital held in common and equal labour, produce goods which are divided in equal proportions; type B consisting of 100 persons, 50 of whom own the land and the means of production, _i.e._ are capitalists, and 50 are shut out from this ownership, _i.e._ are proletarians and workmen; in the distribution, the former receive, in proportion to the capital which they employ, a share in the products of the labour of the latter. It is evident that in type A there is no place for _surplus value_. But neither in type B are you justified in giving the name _surplus-value_ to that portion of the products which is swallowed up by the capitalists, except when _you are comparing_ type B with type A, and _are considering the former as a contrast to the latter_. If type B is considered by itself, which is precisely what the pure economists do and ought to do, the product which the 50 capitalists appropriate, _i.e._ their profits, is a result of mutual agreement, arising out of different comparative degrees of utility. Turn in every direction and in pure economics you will find nothing more. The expropriatory character of profit can be asserted only when to the second society, we apply, almost like a chemical reagent, the standard, which, on the other hand, is characteristic of a type of society founded on human equality, a type 'which has attained the solidity of a popular conviction' (Marx). Profit 'is surplus-labour _not paid for_', says Marx, and it may be so; but _not paid for_ in reference to what? In existing society it is certainly paid for, by the price which it actually secures. It is a question then, of determining in what society _it would have that price_ which in existing society _is denied it_. And then, indeed, it is a question of _comparison_.