"I see here no explanation and reconciliation of a contradiction, but the contradiction itself. Marx's third volume contradicts the first. The theory of the average rate of profit and of the price of production cannot be reconciled with the theory of value. This is the impression which must, I believe, be received by every logical thinker. And it seems to have been very generally accepted. Loria, in his lively and picturesque style, states that he feels himself forced to the 'harsh but just judgment' that Marx, 'instead of a solution has presented a mystification.' He sees in the publication of the third volume 'the Russian campaign' of the Marxian system, its 'complete theoretic bankruptcy,' a 'scientific suicide,' 'the most explicit surrender of his own teaching,' and the 'full and complete adherence to the most orthodox doctrine of the hated economists.'"
Böhm-Bawerk then quotes with approval the following passage from Sombart: "Most of them (the readers of the third volume) will not be inclined to regard 'the solution' of 'the puzzle of the average rate of profit' as a 'solution;' they will think that the knot has been cut, and by no means untied. For, when suddenly out of the depths emerges a 'quite ordinary' theory of cost of production, it means that the celebrated doctrine of value has come to grief. For, if I have in the end to explain the profits by the cost of production, wherefore the whole cumbrous apparatus of the theories of value and surplus-value?"
Slonimski says: "Contrary to all expectations the theory of surplus-value is repeatedly asserted (in the third volume); in reality, however, it is denied by its author and replaced by the old theory with all the familiar elaborations on the cost of production as the only regulators of value. The equality of profits is derived from the phantastic assumption that the capitalists amicably divide among themselves the incomes of the different undertakings, by equalizing the sums of surplus-value which they separately drew
