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In spite of its impressive systematic unity, the market and price theory is in danger of internal contradictions which the author calls the "Paradox of the competitive price formation". Up to now no definition says what competition is, but merely describes under what conditions is exists and which are its consequences. This point is stressed by means of a dogmatic retrospective view. Competition is not a characteristic feature of one market form, but is the fundamental phenomenon of any economy, as long as it is a process; as an organization form of market process competition is, on the contrary, essentially a creature of government. In connection with the theory of economic behavior, competition can be determined as the possibility of alternatives between which the market participants can freely choose. But competition as a behavior can be active only in a state of desequilibrium, whereas in a state of equilibrium it is, per definitionem, in repose. This obviously unsatisfactory result in being analyzed from the point of view of the monopolistic theory, economic history and sociology and confronted with the theory of costs and the theory of games. Finally the author advises to leave economics open to all methods by means of the synthesis of deductive-theoretical and sociologic-historical research, instead of adjusting it simply to the mathematical theory, as in the case of mere functional analysis and model constructions there is no other way than to substitute one abstraction for an other. ; Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas