ABSTRACT
The calculation of labour costs is thus quite unable to provide us with any useful guidance as to which of our undertakings were more or less rationally organised. We must also recognise that it cannot at best provide those decisive directives which are indispensable to the regulation of social production and which are provided, under capitalism, by value calculations. It is true that the capitalist is unable to see the books of his competitors, which remain a business secret so far as he is concerned. But he has no need whatever to see them, for the economic system itself provides him with direct information as to whether he can or cannot carry on his business under the given organisation. For against his prime costs stands the price of the goods he has produced, and this price is formed on the market, in one way or another, independently of the processes which have taken place in the factory. With us, on the other hand, the position is different. Against the prime costs of a commodity, there stands a figure which is derived from the prime costs themselves. The latter, however, are not the prime costs of the commodity as it is produced in the undertaking in question, but in all the undertakings supplying the market; for according to Marx’s doctrine, these average costs represent the true value of the commodity. If a process which arises 24spontaneously be analysed, an error may easily pass unnoticed, but if we attempt consciously to reproduce this process, the defect becomes clearly evident.
