contradiction is supposed to lie. It is a contradiction of the law of value that equal amounts of capital produce the same amount of surplus-value irrespective of their composition. But it is no contradiction of the law of value that possessors of equal amounts of capital receive equal profits if it could be shown that the two capitals have produced different amounts of surplus-value, but that for some reasons, compatible with the law of value, part of the surplus produced by the capital of lower composition was transferred to the owner of the capital with a higher composition. This, says Marx, is just what actually happens wherever the law of equal return comes to the surface.
In actual life capitals of different organic composition produce different rates of surplus-value commensurate with the amounts of variable capital contained in them. But we have already seen before that the whole surplus-value produced by any given capital is not retained by the owner of that capital as profit on his capital. We have seen that, by reason of the social nature of capitalistic production and of the category of exchange-value, this surplus-value is distributed among a number of other capitalists, who are concerned in bringing the produced commodity to its social destination through the circulation process. All the capitals employed in the course of the life-career of the commodity share in the surplus-value created in its production, and their share is proportionate to their size, the rate of profit for each being arrived at by a division of the surplus-value by the aggregate amount of capital used in the production and circulation of the commodity. This is accomplished through the laws of supply and demand by means of the category which we have called Price of Production, and at which commodities are actually sold at certain stages of their existence instead of at their values.
We have seen already that it is in accordance with the laws of value as understood by us that commodities are not always sold at their values; are, in fact, habitually sold at prices other than their values, by reason of an under cer-
