ABSTRACT
Economics has been concerned with exchange relationships, with markets, with the unregulated activities of many men. What, then, is the economics of socialism? One possible answer, for which there is quite considerable warrant in the socialist tradition, is that the 'economics of socialism' is a contradiction in terms, and that the necessary administrative planning functions do not fall under the definition of economics at all. Engels showed himself affected by this kind of reasoning. For him, 'the only value known in economics is the value of commodities. What are commodities? Products made in a society of private producers' . . . which 'enter into social use through exchange'. But from the moment when society enters into possession of the means of production, all these relationships change fundamentally. Social labour is no longer measured in money or value, but 'in its natural, adequate and absolute measure, time . . . People will be able to manage things very simply, without the intervention of the famous "value"'. 1 It is clear from the context that Engels was not denying the existence of economic problems under socialism. However, he certainly thought that people would manage without 'commodities', i.e. without goods which acquire exchange values in relationship to one another, to which the analytical apparatus which Marx and he erected would have any significant application. Quantitative decisions by planners, which relate the desires of the citizens to the labour time necessary for satisfying these desires, would be sufficient, and this would be a 'simple' process, once private ownership of the means of production was eliminated. If Engels envisaged a transition period in the course of which value categories remained in being, he managed to conceal the fact.
