Marx in his "riper" judgment abandoned his theory of value, also agree that even the Marx of the riper judgment never knew that he was propounding in the third volume an old and commonplace theory and was abandoning his own theory, on the exposition of which he wasted the entire first and second volumes of his life work.
In what does this abandonment consist according to the Marx-critics? Stripped of their verbiage the statements of these critics amount to this: In the first volume Marx said (1) that the value of a commodity depends on the amount of labor necessary for its (re)production, and that such value was the point about which its price will oscillate; (2) that the profits of the capitalist, therefore, come from the amount of surplus-value created by his workingmen; and (3) that the cost of production has nothing to do with the value or price of a commodity or the profits of the capitalists. In the third volume, on the other hand, he admits that (1) the price of a commodity may be, and usually is, permanently fixed at, or oscillates about, a point which is different from its value as measured by the amount of labor necessary for its (re)production; (2) that the amount of profits which a capitalist obtains from his capital does not depend upon the amount of surplus-value produced by his own workingmen; and (3) that the old theory of cost of production as to value, price and profit holds good.
We will discuss the last proposition first, for the reason that it may throw some light on the whole subject.
Marx says nowhere in the third volume that the cost of production of a commodity determines either its value or its price, except to say that the old values which go into its production in the shape of raw material, etc., are reproduced in it and form part of its value and consequently of its price, a proposition which nobody will claim is an innovation of the third volume. Wherein does the "quite ordinary" theory of cost of production of the third volume then consist? Evidently in the theory of the Price of Pro-
