economics, it is easier to obscure it with a cloud
of sophistry and persuade their willing dupes that they have refuted it.
And then they raise the cry that the foundation of Marxian Socialism
has been destroyed and that the whole structure is about to tumble down
on the heads of its crazy defenders, the Socialists. It is much to be
regretted that many so-called Socialists are found foolish enough to
play into the hands of the Capitalists by joining in the silly cry that
some pigmy in political economy has overthrown the Marxian theory of
Value. I suppose these so-called Socialists are actuated by a mad desire
to be up to date, to keep up with the intellectual band-wagon.
Revolutions in the various sciences have been going on so rapidly, they
fancy that a theory that was formulated forty years ago must be a
back-number, and so they hasten to declare their allegiance to the last
new cloud of sophistry, purporting to be a theory of value, that has
been evolved by the feeble minds of the anarchists of Italy or the
capitalist economists of Austria. The Fabians of London are the most
striking example of these socialists whose heads have been turned in
this way by the rapid progress of science. But the followers of
Bernstein in Europe and this country are running into the same danger
and in their eagerness to grasp the very newest and latest doctrine will
fall easy victims of the first windy and pretentious fakir who comes
along. Ask any one of these fellows who tells you that the Marxian
theory of Value has been exploded, to state the new and correct theory
of Value that has taken its place and you will find that he cannot state
a theory that you or I or any other man can understand. He will either
admit he is floored, or else he will emit a dense fog of words. I
challenge any one of them to state a theory of value that he himself can
understand, let alone make any one else understand.

Now the Marxian theory of Value can be clearly stated so that you and I
can understand it. But let us begin with surplus-value. This theory of
surplus-value is simply the scientific formulation of the fact that
workingmen had been conscious of in a vague way long before Karl Marx's
day, the fact that the workingman don't get a fair deal, that he don't
get all he earns. This fact had been formulated as long ago as 1821 by
the unknown author of a letter to Lord John Russell on "The Source and
Remedy of the National Difficulties." In this letter