Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy. V – Theory of Value - Part 22 of 28

Engels, then, turns from profit to rent and interest, as other forms of additional cost that contribute to this “distribution value” proposed by Duhring. As Marx sets out, in Capital III, rent and interest are not additions to the value of the commodity, but deductions from profit. The rate of profit, as Marx sets out, is calculated before these deductions. Only after this calculation, required to determine the average industrial rate of profit, and prices of production, is it even possible to calculate surplus profit/rent, or the value of capital, and consequently the parameters for the rate of interest. Only then, for each capital does the division of profit into rent, interest and profit of enterprise occur. As Marx set out in Theories of Surplus Value, even David Hume, and George Massie understood that interest is a deduction from profit.

Engels quotes Duhring's comment on the measure of value.

“this “can be reduced to the existence-time whose self-maintenance in turn represents the overcoming of a certain sum of difficulties in nutrition and life.”” (p 246)

What this means is that the measure of value is labour, and that the value of this labour is equal to the cost of its existence/maintenance during that time. In other words, it is the same confusion between labour and labour-power exhibited by Smith and Ricardo, but, also, by Proudhon et al. As Engels notes,

“Marx says: The value of commodities is determined by the socially necessary general human labour embodied in them, and this in turn is measured by its duration. Labour is the measure of all values, but has no value itself.” (p 245)

By conflating labour with labour-power, Duhring, like Proudhon, makes labour-power/wages the measure and determinant of the value of commodities. This was also the error made by Weston, and analysed by Marx in Value, Price and Profit.

“This finally brings us to what Herr Dühring is really trying to say. The value of a commodity is determined, in the phraseology of vulgar economics, by the cost of production,

as against which Carey, “brought out the truth that it is not the costs of production, but the costs of reproduction that determine value” (Kritische Geschichte, p. 401).” (p 246)

Back To Part 21

Forward To Part 23