I’ve read and understood the gist of Böhm-Bawerk’s criticisms on Wikipedia. Are there any counterpoints to the criticism directed towards him?
Roundabout processes, Böhm-Bawerk maintained, lead to a price that pays for more than labor value and this makes it unnecessary to postulateexploitation in order to understand the return on capital.
However, as Marx explains in Capital, it is not demand that creates, but labour that preserves the value of the commodities obtained prior to the actual process of production - in this case, the iron, steel and machines necessary to make the ladder:
- *The worker is unable to add new labour, to create new value, without at the same time preserving old values, because the labour he adds must be of a specific useful kind, and he cannot do work of a useful kind without employing products as the means of production of a new product, and thereby transferring their value to the new product. [This] is a gift of nature which costs the worker nothing, but is very advantageous to the capitalist since it preserves the existing value of his capital.*[*[*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_theory_of_value#cite_note-29)[*30*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_theory_of_value#cite_note-29)*[]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_theory_of_value#cite_note-29)* and
Regarding other situations where the employer-entrepreneur does receive a profit from after the labor has been rendered (e.g., a salesperson who works on commission), the employer-entrepreneur may take risks other than paying a wage to the salesman, including: providing a salesperson with an office, cell phone and/or computer; paying for product training and marketing materials; paying for travel and lodging expenses; producing inventory in reliance upon future sales that may or may not be made by the salesperson. All of this comprises a potential for loss that accounts for the return on investment realized by the employer-entrepreneur.
This theory directly contradicts the observed fact that in ‘every country where the capitalist mode of production prevails, it is the custom not to pay for labour-power until it has been exercised for the period fixed by the contract, for example, at the end of each week.’[31] It is therefore the rule, and not the exception, that the worker advances her labour-power to the capitalist on credit - an investment of significant risk - for which she earns no compensatory interest or profits. If this is the case, then there can be no necessary link between risk taken and profits made.
Nikolai Bukharin argued that Böhm-Bawerk’s concept of roundaboutness was untenable in the context of the continuous, simultaneous production of a modern economy.[32](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_theory_of_value#cite_note-31)