The Poverty of Philosophy

fluctuations of competition, and thereby of commodity prices, does the law of value of commodity production assert itself, and the determination of commodity value by the socially necessary labor time becomes a reality. That the manifestation of value, the price, usually looks somewhat different from the value it brings to manifestation, this fate is shared by value with most social relationships. The king also usually looks quite different from the monarchy he represents. To want to establish the determination of value by labor time in a society of exchanging commodity producers by forbidding competition from establishing this determination of value through pressure on prices in the only way it can be established at all, means only proving that one has adopted the usual utopian disregard for economic laws in this field at least.

Second: By competition, within a society of exchanging commodity producers, bringing the law of value of commodity production into effect, it thereby asserts the only possible organization and order of social production under the circumstances. Only by means of the devaluation or overvaluation of products are individual commodity producers prodded with the nose as to what and how much of it society needs or does not need. Yet it is precisely this unique regulator that the utopia shared by Rodbertus seeks to abolish. And if we then ask what guarantee we have that the necessary quantity of every product is produced and no more, that we do not suffer hunger for grain and meat,