At some point in our exchange Andrew K wrote to me: > "since you agree that the value of a commodity is k >+ s, and that k doesn't equal the value of the means of production and >subsistence, you *must* agree that the sum of value transferred diverges >from the value of the means of production. Well, not "must," but it's >illogical if you don't." Andrew, here is the essence of our difference. I do not think that Marx is saying that one *determines* the value of a commodity by *adding up* cost price and surplus value. Marx is saying that a value of a commodity can be resolved into its cost price + surplus value. What determines the value of a commodity is simply labor time, the indirect and direct labor time which a commodity embodies or represents. It is perfectly obvious that the value of the wage goods or the value of the money needed to purchase wage goods does not in fact enter the value of the commodity at all. But this would be implied if we understood commodity value to be determined by the addition of surplus value and cost price. That commodity value however is then represented by Marx as cost price + surplus value. One should not mistake the + sign for Marx's determination of commodity value as cost price added to surplus value. This implies exactly what I have been saying: surplus value is the excess of commodity value over its cost price (or the total capital advanced or the money paid for the direct and indirect labor which has been used). Surplus value for Marx is never defined as the excess of commodity value over the value of so called inputs, viz. the value of the means of production, plus the value of the wage goods needed to buy the direct working hours which a commodity embodies. Surplus value is rather expressed as the excess value over the money which has been PAID for that indirect and direct labor embodied in the commodity. At no point does Marx not define surplus value as the excess of commodity value over its cost price (or one of its synonyms: total capital advanced, PAID labour). One simply cannot find in Marx's Capital 3 a single reference to Allin's "value of the inputs" as the subtrahend in Marx's definition of surplus value with total value as the minuend. The reason for this is simple: of the total value produced, what remains as surplus value both for the assessment of successful valorization and redistribution according to a uniform profit rate is the excess value over the cost price (M'>M) , not the excess value over Allin's "value of the inputs" an expression which in any form one simply does not find in Marx. Once one accepts Marx's definition of surplus value as total value minus cost price, the system of transformation equations is no longer overdetermined by the two equalities. It also means that is impossible to postulate the invariance of the mass of surplus value as the cost prices are modified. Yours, Rakesh
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