For Duhring, it is not economic processes that lead to a division of society into different classes, and emergence of a ruling class, but the use of force by some in society, to establish domination over others, which is, then, the basis of the economic/productive relations. Productive value, i.e. the value of a commodity determined by labour-time, is for Duhring, an idealisation, but, thereby, only an abstraction that does not exist in reality, because, from the start, production is always characterised by this existence of social and productive relations based on force. The value of commodities, therefore, is always, for Duhring, greater than the labour-time required for their production, because it always includes these additions for the exploiters in the form of rent, profit, interest and tax.
For Smith, by contrast, he arrives at this same false conclusion, but based not on force, but on economic processes. Why are wages less than the “value of labour”? Because, labour is plentiful and capital is scarce. So, Smith explains it simply on the basis of supply and demand, the “natural price” of labour and capital. But, its this that, also, leads Smith to the conclusion, also false, that, in the end, this will result in the supply of capital rising faster than the supply of labour, so that wages rise and profits, eventually, disappear. This is, also, the conclusion reached by Walras and others. It was Smith's explanation for the long-term tendency for the rate of profit to fall.
“Given the necessary means of production, i.e., a sufficient accumulation of capital, the creation of surplus-value is only limited by the labouring population if the rate of surplus-value, i.e., the intensity of exploitation, is given; and no other limit but the intensity of exploitation if the labouring population is given.”
So, in periods of boom, characterised by extensive accumulation, this explanation provided by Smith is valid. Capital expands faster than the labour supply/social working day, so relative wages rise, relative profits fall, and the rate of surplus value falls until, eventually, surplus value itself stops expanding, with any additional investment of capital. Capital is overproduced.
“There would be absolute over-production of capital as soon as additional capital for purposes of capitalist production = 0. The purpose of capitalist production, however, is self-expansion of capital, i.e., appropriation of surplus-labour, production of surplus-value, of profit. As soon as capital would, therefore, have grown in such a ratio to the labouring population that neither the absolute working-time supplied by this population, nor the relative surplus working-time, could be expanded any further (this last would not be feasible at any rate in the case when the demand for labour were so strong that there were a tendency for wages to rise); at a point, therefore, when the increased capital produced just as much, or even less, surplus-value than it did before its increase, there would be absolute over-production of capital; i.e., the increased capital C + ΔC would produce no more, or even less, profit than capital C before its expansion by ΔC. In both cases there would be a steep and sudden fall in the general rate of profit, but this time due to a change in the composition of capital not caused by the development of the productive forces, but rather by a rise in the money-value of the variable capital (because of increased wages) and the corresponding reduction in the proportion of surplus-labour to necessary labour.”
(Capital III, Chapter 15)
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