the raw material, instruments of labor and
actual wages paid in distinction to taxation, profit and compulsory
raising of prices. It is well recognised that in modern society the
competing entrepreneurs do not sell their wares at the natural cost of
production but calculate on a profit and generally get it. This
question which Herr Duehring fancies will level the walls of Marxism
as the blast of Joshua did those of Jericho is a question which the
economic doctrines of Duehring have to meet also.

"Capitalistic property," he says, "has no practical value and only
realises itself because it implies the exercise of indirect power over
man. The testimony to the existence of this force is capitalistic
profit, and the amount of this latter depends upon the extent and
intensity of the power of 'force.'... Capitalistic profit is a
political and social institution which manifests itself very strongly
as competition. The entrepreneurs take their stand on this relation
and each one of them maintains his position. A certain amount of
profit is a necessity of the dominant economic condition."

We know quite well that the entrepreneurs are in a position to sell
the products of labor at a cost above the natural cost of production.
Surely Herr Duehring does not think so meanly of his public as to hold
the position that profit on capital stands above competition as the
King of Prussia used to stand above the law. The proceeding by which
the King of Prussia reached his position of superiority to the law we
all know, the methods by which profit has come to be mightier than
competition is just what Herr Duehring has to explain and what he
stubbornly refuses to explain. It is no argument when he says that the
entrepreneurs trade from this position and each one of them maintains
his own place. If we take him at his word, how is it possible for a
number of people each to be able to trade only on certain terms and
yet each one of them to keep his position? The gildmen of the Middle
Ages and the French nobility of 1789 operated from a decidedly
superior position, and yet they came to grief. The Prussian army at
Jena occupied an advantageous position and yet it had to abandon it
and surrender piecemeal. It is not enough to tell us that a certain
measure of profit is a necessary concomitant of domination in the
economic sphere, it is necessary to tell us why. We do not get a step
further by the statement of Duehring. "Capitalistic superiority is