century had gone through thirty-one editions
and which was distributed throughout the towns and the country
districts by officials, preachers and humanitarians, of all sorts, and
which was universally adopted in the schools as a reader. This book
was called, "The Children's Friend" by Rochow. It had the object of
teaching the children of the peasant and laboring classes their
vocation in life and their duties to their social and political
superiors, and making them satisfied with their lot in life, with
black bread and potatoes, compulsory servitude, low wages, fatherly
beatings and other similar agreeable things. In pursuit of this end,
the youth in town and country was informed what a wise provision of
nature it was that man was obliged to get his food and enjoyment by
means of his labor, and how fortunate the peasant and handworker ought
to feel that they were able to spice their food with hard labor while
the spendthrift and the picture suffered the pangs of indigestion or
lack of appetite. These commonplaces which old Rochow thought good
enough for the peasant children of his day have been elevated into
the "absolute fundamental" of the newest political economy by Herr
Duehring.

Value is defined as follows by Herr Duehring "Value is what economic
goods and activities will fetch in exchange." What they will fetch is
shown "by the price or some other equivalent, wages for example." In
other words Value is price. Or not to do Herr Duehring an injury and
to show the absolute absurdity of his definition in his own language,
"Value is prices." On page 19 he says "Value and its prices expressed
in money" and he also affirms that the same value has very different
prices and therefore has different values. If Hegel had not died long
ago he would hang himself out of pure jealousy, for, with all his
theology, he could not have produced this value which has as many
different values as it has prices. One would have to possess the
confidence of Herr Duehring to begin a new and more profound treatment
of political economy with the declaration that there is no difference
between value and price except that one is expressed in terms of money
and the other is not.

(After gentle raillery of Duehring's statements Engels proceeds.)

The actual, practical value of an object according to Herr Duehring
consists in two things, first in the amount of human labor contained
in it and secondly in a forcibly imposed tax. In other words val