This question <607|613> overall <608|610> Scott: <606|25>.

Question 370: Why do the commodity owners write the price on their price signs and not the labor-content of the commodity they are producing?

[609] Scott: Commodity owners do not write the labor content of the commodity they have produced on the for sale signs because if they, the capitalist, did this the purchaser would give them exactly that, the labor content price! The capitalist would not gain a profit because he would have paid the laborer exactly the cost of what it took to make the good. The capitalist would be unable to receive the difference that was made in the product, which was put there by the laborer. The capitalist would not be able to gain from the production process, from owning the production process and so he would have to find some other way to gain his money.

Hans: In Marx's theory, prices are determined by labor content, and capitalists make profits. How? By not paying laborers as much money as their labor produces. I tried to explain this in more detail in [45], [49], and [113]. This is a very basic part of the theory.

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