An attempt to determine whether Ricardo or Malthus was right would involve us immediately in a discussion of the ultimate relation of cost in all its forms to value, which, so far as we do enter into it, we hope to make the culmination of this essay. Which view is the more profound, and whether an ambiguity in the word value is involved in the controversy, are questions by no means easy to answer. 4. With this general theory, that the empirical law of costs is “subordinate” to the law of supply and demand, as a starting-point, Malthus proceeds to a thorough criticism of Ricardo’s law of labor cost. In the indictment which he brings against this principle, we may for ourselves distinguish seven counts (indicated by the numbers in brackets). These counts really fall into two classes. The first main contention is that Ricardo considers the relation between entrepreneur’s cost (“necessary price,” as Malthus calls it; “natural price,” or cost in “labour and profits,” as Ricardo calls it) and actual market values too intimate. There are three sources of variation of actual from natural prices which should be emphasized. There are [1] the temporary market alterations of prices, too rapid to be met by changing the volume of production; [2] monopoly in the product itself, or some raw product used in its making; [3] seasonal fluctuations in all products of the soil. The second main contention[120] is that Ricardo overestimates the degree of control exercised by labor cost over natural price. Note the following comprehensive passage: “Under all the variations, therefore, which arise [4] from the different proportions of fixed capital employed, the different quickness of the returns of the circulating capital, [5] the quantity of foreign commodities used in manufactures, [6] the acknowledged effects of taxation, [7] and the almost universal prevalence of rent in the actual state of all improved countries, we must I think allow that ... _it is certainly not_ the quantity of labour which has been employed in the production of each particular commodity which determines their relative values in exchange at the same time and at the same place.”[121] The claim is in unequivocal language that “well-known causes of constant and universal operation” destroy the proportionality of value to labor cost.