We are now face to face with the great difficulty. If surplus-value is the sole source of the profit fund, the profit funds of different business units ought to be in proportion to the surplus labor time immediately exploited in them. Since the surplus labor time in each day of labor depends on the general rate of wages, there is a general rate of surplus labor time per labor day—_e. g._, four hours in ten—and the profit fund of every business would be directly in proportion to the number of laborers it employed. This is absolutely not the case in fact. “It appears, therefore,” says Marx, “that here the theory of value is irreconcilable with the actual movement of things.”[88] For technical reasons, the proportions in which the entrepreneur’s outlays are invested in labor on the one hand, and other production-goods on the other hand, are different in different lines of business. The make-up of the entrepreneur’s outlay with respect to these proportions Marx calls the “organic composition” of his capital.[89] The facts of life are that equal capitals, in the sense of equal outlays, in different employments tend to produce equal “profit funds,” regardless of their organic composition. Now what the profit fund actually turns out to be, depends on the selling price or value of the product. If we take a capital spent _in large proportion_ for labor, the large amount of surplus labor time exploited ought to give the product a value very much in excess of the outlay, and afford a large profit fund. If we take a precisely equal capital, spent in very small proportion for labor, and almost entirely for machinery, _etc._, the relatively small amount of surplus labor time exploited ought to make the value of the product not nearly so great as that of the first capital. Since Marx frankly admits that in fact competition makes _the value of these products equal instead of unequal_, how does he “solve the contradiction” and redeem his theory? The actual “profit” (as defined here temporarily) afforded by the selling-value of the products is, throughout society, on the average, say 20 per cent. of that value. Where the “organic composition of capital” in a particular industry happens to be such that the profit which ought to be produced according to the theory is also the actual profit, here the _value_ of the product required by the theory will be the same as the actual value. But in some industries where the proportion of labor purchased in the total outlay is low, the actual value will be above the theoretical value, whereas in other industries, under reverse conditions, the actual value will be below the theoretical value. Now, concludes Marx, _the variations of actual values_ (called by Marx simply “prices”) _above and below the theoretical or labor values_ (called by Marx simply “values”) _counterbalance or cancel one another, and the total actual values of all commodities collectively remain equal to their total labor values_.[90]