All consumers, as buyers of commodities, therefore, buy commodities at their value, in aggregate, i.e. at their social cost of production. The difference is that it is only capitalists who also sell those commodities at those values, but whose costs of production of them is less than that value.
“According to Herr Dühring, the natural outlays of production consist
“in the expenditure of labour or energy, and this in turn, in the last analysis, can be measured by the expenditure of food”
that is, in present-day society, these costs consist in the outlays actually expended on raw materials, instruments of labour, and wages, as distinguished from the “tax”, the profit, the surcharge levied sword in hand. Now everyone knows that in the society in which we live the competing entrepreneurs do not realise their commodities at the natural costs of production, but that they add on — and as a rule also receive — the so-called surcharge, the profit. The question which Herr Dühring thinks he has only to raise to blow down the whole Marxian structure — as Joshua blew down the walls of Jericho of yore — this same question also exists for Herr Dühring's economic theory.” (p 274-5)
In other words, Duhring's theory amounts to the same claim as that made by Proudhon that the value of commodities is determined by wages, the value of labour-power. Profit is, then, not an integral part of the value of commodities, but an arbitrary surcharge added to that value/price by the capitalist. That reduces it to being purely subjective and arbitrary, and so is not scientific. What determines that this surcharge is, say, 10% as opposed to 100% etc.? Moreover, if it is not an inherent component of the value of the commodity, why would not competition between capitalists reduce it to zero, as happens with surplus profits? That, of course, was, also, the conclusion that Walras and others were forced into, as the consequence of the neoclassical theory.
How does Duhring deal with this problem?
“Capital ownership,” he says, “has no practical meaning, and cannot be realized, unless indirect force against human material is simultaneously included in it. The product of this force is the earnings of capital, and the magnitude of the latter will therefore depend on the range and intensity of this exercise of domination ... Earnings of capital are a political and social institution which operates more powerfully than competition. In this connection the capitalists act as a social estate, and each one maintains his position. A certain measure of earnings of capital is a necessity in this kind of economy, once it is dominant” (p 275)
In other words, Duhring can only resolve his dilemma by claiming that the capitalists, as a class, come together in some kind of conspiratorial and coordinated manner, to agree amongst themselves what the level of this surcharge will be, and, thereby, utilise the force provided by the state to extract it. The fact that this fails the test of prima facie credibility is the least of its deficiencies. How, where, and when do the capitalists organise such meetings? Where is there evidence of such activity? Its true that, prior to the ascendancy of capitalist production, as Engels deribes in his Supplement To Capital III, the feudal guilds, and the merchants guilds did set agreed selling prices and profit margins, but capitalist production dismantled all of those monopolies. In fact, as Marx describes, so long as these antediluvian forms of capital – merchant capital and usurers capital – dominated, industrial capital could not become firmly established. They drained the surplus value produced both by the independent commodity producers and the small capitalist producers. In so doing, they thwarted capital accumulation, and threatened production itself.
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