And now too Professor Labriola, in a hasty glance at the same subject, referring clearly to Sombart, and partly agreeing and partly criticising, writes: 'the theory of value does not denote an empirical _factum_ nor does it express a merely _logical proposition_, as some have imagined; but it is the _typical premise_ without which all the rest would be unthinkable.'[19] Labriola's phrase appears to me, in fact, somewhat more accurate than Sombart's; who, moreover, shows himself dissatisfied with his own term, like someone who has not yet a quite definite concept in view, and hence cannot find a satisfactory phrase. '_Conceptual fact_,' '_logical fact_' expresses much too little since it is evident that all sciences are interwoven from logical facts, that is from concepts. Marx's labour-value is not only a logical generalisation, it is also _a fact conceived and postulated as typical_, _i.e._ something more than a mere logical concept. Indeed it has not the inertia of the abstract but the force of a concrete fact,[20] which has in regard to capitalist society, in Marx's investigation, the function of a term of comparison, of a standard, of a _type_.[21] This standard or type being postulated, the investigation, for Marx, takes the following form. Granted that value is equal to the labour socially necessary, it is required to show _with what divergencies from this standard_ the prices of commodities are fixed in capitalist society, and how labour-power itself acquires a price and becomes a commodity. To speak plainly, Marx stated the problem in unappropriate language; he represented this typical value itself, postulated by him as a standard, as being the _law_ governing the economic phenomena of capitalist society. And it is the law, if he likes, but in the _sphere of his conceptions_, not _in economic reality_. We may conceive the divergencies from a standard as the revolt of reality when confronted by this standard which we have endowed with the dignity of law.