We have shown how the same causes that bring about a tendency for the
 general rate of profit to fall necessitate an accelerated accumulation of
 capital and, consequently, an increase in the absolute magnitude, or total
 mass, of the surplus-labour (surplus-value, profit) appropriated by it. Just as
 everything appears reversed in competition, and thus in the consciousness of
 the agents of competition, so also this law, this inner and necessary
 connection between two seeming contradictions. It is evident that within the
 proportions indicated above a capitalist disposing of a large capital will
 receive a larger mass of profit than a small capitalist making seemingly high
 profits. Even a cursory examination of competition shows, furthermore, that
 under certain circumstances, when the greater capitalist wishes to make room
 for himself on the market, and to crowd out the smaller ones, as happens in
 times of crises, he makes practical use of this, i.e., he deliberately
 lowers his rate of profit in order to drive the smaller ones to the wall.
 Merchants capital, which we shall describe in detail later, also notably
 exhibits phenomena which appear to attribute a fall in profit to an expansion
 of business, and thus of capital. The scientific expression for this false
 conception will be given later. Similar superficial observations result from a
 comparison of rates of profit in individual lines of business, distinguished
 either as subject to free competition, or to monopoly. The utterly shallow
 conception existing in the minds of the agents of competition is found in
 Roscher, namely, that a reduction in the rate of profit is "more prudent and
 humane". [Roscher, Die Grundlage der Nationalökonomie, 3 Auflage,
 1858, 108, S. 192. — Ed.] The fall in the rate of profit appears
 in this case as an effect of an increase in capital and of the
 concomitant calculation of the capitalist that the mass of profits pocketed by
 him will be greater at a smaller rate of profit. This entire conception (with
 the exception of Adam Smith's, which we shall mention later) [K. Marx,
 Theorien über den Mehrwert. K. Marx/F. Engels, Werke, Band
 26, Teil 2, S. 214-28. — Ed.] rests on an utter misapprehension
 of what the general rate of profit is, and on the crude notion that prices are
 actually determined by adding a more or less arbitrary quota of profit to the
 true value of commodities. Crude as these ideas are, they arise necessarily out
 of the inverted aspect which the immanent laws of capitalist production
 represent in competition.