Note 908 — Chapter II · : STATE SOCIALISM

Rodbertus expressly declares that to say that goods are the product of labour is not to imply that the value of the product is always equal to what it cost in the way of labour, or, in other words, that the labour spent on it does not always measure its value (Schriften, vol. ii, pp. 104, 105). A similar statement is made in the Forderungen (1837). In the Zur Erkenntniss (1842) (pp. 129-131) he gives some of the reasons why he thinks that the value of a product is not equal to the labour it has cost: (1) There is the necessity for equalising the gains of capital; (2) the price of a unit of any commodity is fixed by the price of the unit which costs most to reproduce. In the second of the Soziale Briefe he repeats the statement that the labour value theory is nothing better than an ideal (Kapital, Appendix, p. 279). In a letter written to R. Meyer on January 7, 1872, he affirms the demonstration which he had already given, “that goods do not and cannot exchange merely in proportion to the quantity of labour which has been absorbed by them simply because of the existence of capital”; and he adds the significant words: “a demonstration that might in case of need be employed against Marx.”