'Every child knows that a country which ceased to work, I will not say for a year but for a few months, would die. Every child knows toothat the mass of products corresponding to diferent needs require different and qualitatively determined measures of the total labour of society. That this necessity of distributing social labour in definite proportions cannot be done away with by the particular form of social production but can only change the form it assumes, is self evident.' Marx to Kugelman, in Pilling, Marx's Capital, p 42