Marxist Apologist (Later for Nazism) Werner Sombart Admits that the Marxian Law of Value Is False If It Claims To Be in Harmony with Actual Experience

An apologist of Marx, as intelligent as he is ardent, has lately appeared in the person of Werner Sombart. His apology, however, shows one peculiar feature. In order to be able to defend Marx's doctrines he has first to put a new interpretation upon them.

Let us go at once to the main point. Sombart admits (and even adds some very subtle arguments to the proof) that the Marxian law of value is false if it claims to be in harmony with actual experience. He says (p. 573) of the Marxian law of value that it “is not exhibited in the exchange relation of capitalistically produced commodities,” that it “does not by any means indicate the point towards which market prices gravitate,” that “just as little does it act as a factor of distribution in the division of the yearly social product,” and that “it never comes into evidence anywhere” (p. 577). The “outlawed value” has only “one place of refuge left—the thought of the theoretical economist. . . . If we want to sum up the characteristics of Marx's value, we would say, his value is a fact not of experience but of thought” (p. 574).

--Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Karl Marx and the Close of His System, ed. Paul M. Sweezy (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1949), 102.