at what they comply with, and wish that there were less capital,257 or, as they express it, less competition, in order that there might be greater profits. Low profits, however, are a different thing from deficiency [pg 371] of demand, and the production and accumulation which merely reduce profits can not be called excess of supply or of production. What the phenomenon really is, and its effects and necessary limits, will be seen when we treat of that express subject.
Chapter XII. Of Some Peculiar Cases Of Value.
§ 1. Values of commodities which have a joint cost of production.
The general laws of value, in all the more important cases of the interchange of commodities in the same country, have now been investigated. We examined, first, the case of monopoly, in which the value is determined by either a natural or an artificial limitation of quantity, that is, by demand and supply: secondly, the case of free competition, when the article can be produced in indefinite quantity at the same cost; in which case the permanent value is determined by the cost of production,