Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natural LawRickaby, Joseph
Philosophy
Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natural Law
Rickaby, Joseph
Ethics
5. If angels are to hold the collective ownership of capital and the
government of men in the Socialist Commonwealth; or if every citizen,
retaining in his private capacity all the follies and vices that human
flesh is heir to, shall still be vested in angelic attributes,
whenever he sits as legislator or judge, or acts on the executive of a
Socialist commission,--then this new Commonwealth is likely to prove a
blessed substitute for the rule of the higher classes, which in one
way or another has hitherto obtained in civilized society. But till
angelic attributes descend on earth, we shall not find a cure for the
evils of cities and countries in simply doubling the functions of
government, and placing all sovereign rights, and all the most
important of proprietory rights and duties, in the hands of a
numerical majority.
6. Capital, as we have seen, is a collection of market or exchange
values in view of further exchange. If we call supply S and demand D,
market value is a social estimate of the fraction D/S. Another
definition has been given: Market value is a social estimate of the
amount of socially useful labour which a given article contains. This
second definition contains this much of truth in it, that directly as
the demand for an article, and inversely as the supply of the same, is
the amount of labour which men find it worth their while to spend upon
that article for commercial purposes. Otherwise the definition is
unsatisfactory and involved, and leads to endless discussion. Without
entering into these discussions, we will remark an ambiguity in the
term on which they all roll, the term _labour_, which ambiguity is at
the bottom of three fourths of the sophistries of popular Socialism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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