Now, if we were to say after the manner of Adam Smith that I(v + s)
 resolve themselves into IIc, and IIc resolves itself into I(v + s), or, as he used to say more frequently and still more absurdly, I(v + s) constitute component parts of the price (or “value in exchange,” as he has it) of II and II constitutes the entire component part of the value of I(v + s), then one could and should likewise say that (IIb)v resolves itself into (IIa)s, or
 (IIa)s into (IIb)v, or (IIb)v forms a component part of the surplus-value of IIa, and, vice versa, the surplus-value thus resolves itself into wages, or into variable capital, and the variable capital forms a “component part” of the surplus-value. This absurdity is indeed found in Adam Smith,
 since with him wages are determined by the value of the necessities of
 life, and these commodity-values in their turn by the value of the wages
 (variable capital) and surplus-value contained in them. He is so
 absorbed in the fractional parts into which the value-product of one
 working-day is divided on the basis of capitalism — namely into v plus
 s — that he quite forgets that it is immaterial in simple commodity
 exchange whether the equivalents existing in various bodily forms
 consist of paid or unpaid labour, since their production costs in either
 case the same amount of labour; and that it is also immaterial whether
 the commodity of A is a means of production and that of B an article of
 consumption and whether one commodity has to serve as a component
 part of capital after its sale while another passes into the consumption-fund
 and, secundum Adam, is consumed as revenue. The use to which
 the individual buyer puts his commodity does not come within the scope
 of commodity-exchange, the sphere of circulation, and does not affect
 the value of the commodity. This is in no wise altered by the fact that in
 the analysis of the circulation of the total annual social product, the
 definite use for which it is intended, the factor of consumption of the
 various component parts of that product, must be taken into consideration.