Duhring applies the first mathematical axiom that the whole is greater than the part, in his statement,
“All-embracing being is one. In its self-sufficiency it has nothing alongside of it or over it. To associate a second being with it would be to make it something that it is not, namely, a part or constituent of a more comprehensive whole.” (p 51)
But, as Engels had noted, this axiom is tautological. To say that the whole is greater than any of its parts is also to say that a whole consists of the unity of its parts and those parts are, by definition, smaller than the whole. However, as Engels goes on to show, and, as Marx sets out, in practice, in Capital and Theories of Surplus Value, to recognise that a whole comprises the unity of its parts is not at all to deny the existence, in their own right, of those parts, or the contradictions and antagonisms of those parts, within the whole.
As Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17, the error of economists like Mill, Say and Ricardo, in denying the potential for a crisis of overproduction of commodities, lay, precisely, in this.
“If, for example, purchase and sale—or the metamorphosis of commodities—represent the unity of two processes, or rather the movement of one process through two opposite phases, and thus essentially the unity of the two phases, the movement is essentially just as much the separation of these two phases and their becoming independent of each other. Since, however, they belong together, the independence of the two correlated aspects can only show itself forcibly, as a destructive process. It is just the crisis in which they assert their unity, the unity of the different aspects. The independence which these two linked and complimentary phases assume in relation to each other is forcibly destroyed. Thus the crisis manifests the unity of the two phases that have become independent of each other. There would be no crisis without this inner unity of factors that are apparently indifferent to each other. But no, says the apologetic economist. Because there is this unity, there can be no crises. Which in turn means nothing but that the unity of contradictory factors excludes contradiction.”
(Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17)
They saw commodities only as products, rather than as commodities. A product is a use-value produced for direct consumption. Marx makes this point most clearly against James Mill. If I spend labour-time producing a product, it is because it has use-value to me. I wish to consume it. Value, the labour-time I spend in its production (individual value) is, here, inseparable from use-value, within the product, just as production and consumption, supply and demand are inseparable.
Mill failed to see that this does not apply to commodities, and his error was replicated by Say and Ricardo. Because they saw a unity between production and consumption, supply and demand, they dismissed the idea that there could be any contradiction between them. They believed that just as the direct producer does not expend their labour-time on the creation of products unless they are going to consume them, so the producer of commodities does not spend their labour-time on the production of commodities unless there is a demand for them.
As Marx notes, this is stated clearly in Ricardo.
““M. Say,” writes Ricardo in Chapter XXI (“Effects of Accumulation on Profits and Interest”), “has…most satisfactorily shewn, that there is no amount of capital which may not be employed in a country, because demand is only limited by production. No man produces, but with a view to consume or sell, and he never sells, but with an intention to purchase some other commodity, which may be immediately useful to him, or which may contribute to future production. By producing, then, he necessarily becomes either the consumer of his own goods, or the purchaser and consumer of the goods of some other person. It is not to be supposed that he should, for any length of time, be ill-informed of the commodities which he can most advantageously produce, to attain the object which he has in view, namely, the possession of other goods; and, therefore, it is not probable that he will continually” (the point in question here is not eternal life) “produce a commodity for which there is no demand.” ([David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, London, 1821,] pp. 339-40.)”
(Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17)
But, it is clearly false. In a system of barter, the conditions of direct production pertain, to a degree, because the seller (supply) only sells (exchanges) if they find a buyer (demand) from amongst the producers of other commodities. The buyer buys with their own commodities (supply), so that supply and demand are tautologically equated, in C – C. However, even here, it does not mean that the individual producer, of any given commodity, is able to exchange all of their production for other commodities they desire. In other words, as soon as production and consumption is separated, there simultaneously occurs a separation of value and use-value, supply and demand. As Marx notes, these form a unity, but, in the commodity, it is a contradictory unity of two poles, and as such, these two poles can fall apart.
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