Theory of Factors of Production, a bourgeois theory which asserts that there are three main factors interacting in the production process: labour, capital, and land. Each factor is presented as an independent source of value. The wage is the price of labour, and the sole result of the worker’s activity in the production process. In this way the exploitation of the workers is masked. Profit (often catted interest) is 363 pictured either as a result of the productivity of capital, or as remuneration which capitalist receives for his work. Rent is often called nature’s gift. Capital is identified with the means of production and is perpetuated as such. The theory was first developed by the vulgar French economist J. B. Say (1st half of the 19th century). Because the means of production, like labour itself, are necessary elements of any labour process, advocates of this theory erroneously contended that these elements are independent sources of value. Actually, in the production process, abstract labour creates new value and concrete labour transfers the value of the means of production to a new product, using them to create a new use value. Therefore, workers’ labour alone is the source of the new value from which capitalists and landowners derive their profits. In modern capitalism, the "three factors" theory is being modified as follows: first, the range of factors involved in the production process and in the creation of value expands with the incorporation into them of the state, science and "human capital”, i. e. man’s knowledge, skills and abilities which result in higher labour productivity; second, the establishment of new relations between production factors (with science and "human capital" moved to the forefront); third, the use of the factors of production theory for new apologetic aims (the claim that capitalism is evolving into a post-industrial society in which power will pass to the scientists); fourth, the mathematical interpretation of this theory. Certain real processes in the development of production—the heightening role of technical progress, science, education, and the economic role of the state —are reflected in the factors of production theory. However, all these new phenomena are being treated in a distorted way, in order to achieve the objectives of capitalism’s apology. Formerly, this theory was used to disguise capitalist exploitation and to negate the existence of capitalism’s antagonistic contradictions, whereas now it is being used as an argument for the vulgar conception of the "transformation of capitalism" (see Theories of Transformation of Capitalism).