Steve, Many thanks for the very interesting long post. A lot to chew on but the key seems to be your view that the important distinction between machines and labour does not entail that SV is only produced by labour. The 'tortuous' argument of Marx, denying that machines produce SV, that you refer to is difficult (though not tortuous) only because Marx's prior notion of value and labour is entailed, imo. Anyway Marx's argument seems to me to amount to the following: IF a machine were, in general, to contribute more value in production than it initially costs THEN the laws of free exchange - ie. supply and demand - entail that its price will go up until equal to the sum of (present) value contributed. This is simply the 'law of one price': the machine and its contribution to production are merely different forms of the same commodity (the potential form and the realised form), rather than being two distinct commodities, hence their price (present value) is the same. What do you think? Best wishes, Andy
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