Folia Theologica 11. (2000)
Eugene Csocsan de Váralja: The Just Income Distribution
THE JUST INCOME DISTRIBUTION 121 utility, while its existence depends on the rarity of the items involved and on their evaluation in relationship to the users' goals. (Meanwhile it could be noticed, that a good bought can be hardly sold on precisely the same price because the economy is a goal oriented process and in its flow it is not possible to return to exactly the same point.) This teleological value theory differs fundamentally from labour theory of value introduced by David Ricardo,32 33 which was forged into the key and central axis of the Marxism by Carl Marx. According to his labour theory of value the value of the good is defined by socially required labour. This definition however is “dialectically” ambiguous, because while it claims to be a labour theory of value, in fact it smuggles the consumption and the demand into the definition by using the expression “socially required”. In the reality the society continually reduces the amount of socially required work by the introduction of various devices, inventions and robots. Therefore the acceptance of the labour theory value would imply, that the total value available to society had been continually reduced by technological development. The labour theory of value can not give unambiguous direction for values for example in the case of power stations, as electric power is certainly required socially, but the labour required for its production is completely different, if the power stations are based on the energy in coal or on the energy of water power. In addition there are economic values, which do not contain any human labour. One can obtain money for allowing the harvest from apricot, nut, banana or coconut trees, which might have grown without any labour involved. Similarly the diamonds appearing in the soil for example in Sierra Leone can not be without any economic value. * * * 32 “in the early stages of society the exchangeable value of these commodities or the rule which determines how much of one shall be given in exchange for another depends almost exclusively on the comparative quantity of labour expanded on each.” Ricardo, David: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, London 1817,Chapter 1 “On Value”, (London edition of 1948, page 6.) 33 Es ist also nur das Quantum gesellschaftlich nothwendiger Arbeit oder die Herstellung eines Gebrauchswerths gesellschaftlich nothwendige Arbeitzeit welche seine Werthgrösse bestimmt”Marx, Carl: Das Kapital, Volume I, Hamburg 1867, Ersttes Buch:”Der Produktives Process des Kapitels” Ester Abschnitt “Waare und Geld”, Erstes Kapitel: “Die Waare”. (Third edition Hamburg 1883, page 6)
