According to Duhring, who adopts from Adam Smith's cost of production theory of value, the value of commodities consists of two components, the costs of production, including wages, and the net product, which constitutes the master's income.
“And what is the “net product” constituting “the master's income” but the surplus of the product of labour over and above the wages, which, despite their quite superfluous disguise as a remuneration, must generally assure the worker's subsistence and possibility of propagation even with Herr Dühring? How can the “appropriation of the most important part of the product of labour-power” be carried out unless, as Marx shows, the capitalist extorts from the worker more labour than is necessary for the reproduction of the means of subsistence the latter consumes, that is, unless the capitalist makes the worker work a longer time than is necessary for the replacement of the value of the wages paid the labourer?” (p 280)
For Duhring, the determination of the value of the commodity becomes subjective and so arbitrary. It is the consequence of a cost of production theory of value in which the value/price of a commodity is derived simply as an exercise in the summation of these different factor costs.
“Thus the prolongation of the working-day beyond the time necessary for the reproduction of the labourer’s means of subsistence, Marx’s surplus-labour — this, and nothing but this, is concealed behind Herr Dühring's “utilisation of labour-power”; and his “net product” falling to the master — how can it manifest itself otherwise than in the Marxian surplus-product and surplus-value?” (p 280)
For Marx, there are objective, material constraints. The physical working-day is limited to 24 hours, but, itself, is reduced by the time required for the rest and recuperation required by the worker. The normal working day is limited by the fact that, beyond a certain degree of duration or intensity, the labour-power, itself, wears out more quickly, and so the value of labour-power/wages rises, reducing the amount of surplus value. So a limit on the amount of new value that can be produced, in a day, is set. At the same time, the value of labour-power is also objectively determined by the labour-time required to reproduce the labourer. Consequently, the difference between these two values – the new value created by labour and the value of labour-power – determines the amount of surplus-labour/value, which means it is no longer a subjective or arbitrary amount.
“And what, apart from its inexact formulation, is there to distinguish the Dühringian rent of possession from the Marxian surplus-value? For the rest, Herr Dühring has taken the name “rent of possession” (“Besitzrente“) from Rodbertus, who included both the ground-rent and the rent of capital, or earnings of capital, under the one term rent, so that Herr Dühring had only to add "possession" to it. So that no doubt may be left about his plagiarism, Herr Dühring sums up, in his own way, the laws of the changes of magnitude in the price of labour-power and in surplus-value which are developed by Marx in Chapter XV (Capital page 539, ff.), and does so in such a manner that what falls to the rent of possession must be lost to wages, and vice versa, he thus reduces the particular Marxian laws, which are so rich in content, to a tautology without content, for it is self-evident that one part of a given magnitude falling into two parts, cannot increase unless the other decreases.” (p 280-1)
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