6. We need now the proof of this interpretation. The opening sentence of the chapter on natural and market price proceeds as follows: “In making labour the foundation of the value of commodities, and the comparative quantity of labour which is necessary to their production the rule which determines the respective quantities of goods which shall be given in exchange for each other, we must not be supposed to deny the accidental and temporary deviations of the actual or market price of commodities from _this, their primary and natural price_.”[59] This sentence seems to state that the labor cost of a commodity is its “natural price.” If so, the statement is due to the influence of the philosophical account; but it is an absurdity in this connection. Actual market-price does not deviate temporarily from _labor cost_. Normal value is not an amount of labor, nor can it be spoken of as equal to an amount of labor. The passage is a careless way of saying that the normal values of goods are _in proportion to_ their labor costs. Ricardo’s real conception of normal value is this: The total labor cost of a commodity determines the total wages charges that must be paid by the entrepreneur, or series of entrepreneurs producing it. Competition tends to give the entrepreneurs producing different commodities equal rates of “profits” upon these outlays. Therefore the normal exchange value of a commodity is composed of a sum of wages costs (due to the nature of the commodity as requiring such and such an amount of labor to produce it), which is the independent determining element, and a sum of interest which is merely a uniform rate upon the wages cost. It is in this way that labor cost regulates value, _according to an empirical account_.[60] To substantiate this view of Ricardo’s meaning, we can quote the following: “Mr. Malthus appears to think that it is a part of my doctrine that the cost and value of a thing should be the same;—it is, if he means by cost, ‘cost of production’ including profits.”[61] The only kind of cost that includes “profits” (_i. e._, interest) is entrepreneur’s cost.