production of commodities and that the determination of value by the labor time socially necessary becomes a reality. That the form of representation of value, price, has, in general, a quite other aspect than the value which it manifests, is a lot which it shares with the greater part of social relations. The king often bears but slight resemblance to the monarchy which he represents. In a society of producers of exchangeable commodities, to wish to determine value by labor time by interdicting competition from establishing this determination of value in the single form by which it can do this—in influencing its price, is to show, at least in this connection, the habitual utopian misunderstanding of economic laws.
In the second place competition, in realizing the law of value of the production of commodities in a society of producers for exchange, establishes by that means and by assured conditions the single order and the single organisation possible for social production. It is only by the depreciation or appreciation of the price of products that the isolated producers of commodities learn to their cost what kind of things society requires, and the quantity it requires of them. But it is precisely this single regulator which the utopianism shared by Rodbertus would suppress. And if we ask what guarantee we have that only the necessary quantity of each commodity would be produced, that we should not be wanting corn and meat while there was an abundance of beet sugar and we were inundated with a too plentiful supply of potato spirit, that we should not be lacking breeches to cover our nakedness while breeches buttons were multiplied by the million—Rodbertus triumphantly shows us his famous account, in which there is set forth an exact certificate for each superfluous pound of sugar, for each cask of spirit not purchased, for each useless
