I am still waiting for ONE QUOTE from Allin in which Marx says that surplus value is total value minus the value of the inputs so that if the price of the latter changes, surplus value itself remains unchanged. He will not find that quote because Marx resolves total value into k + s, which vary inversely. As support for my thesis that the mass of surplus value should not be held invariant as we transform the inputs and modify cost prices (upward in our examples), consider Marx in TSVII: "The quantity of labour required for the production of a commodity, and contained in it, determines its value, which is thus a *given* factor, a *definite amount*. This amount is divided between wage labourer and capitalist. (Ricardo, like Adam Smith, does not take constant capital into account here.) It is obvious that the share of one can only rise or fall in proportion to the fall or rise of the share of the other...Since the value of the commodities is determined by the quantity of labour contained in them, and since wages and surplus value (profit) are only *shares*, proportions in which two clases of producers share the value of the commodity between themselves, it is clear that a rise or fall in wages, although it is determines the rate of surplus value (profit) does not affect the value of the commodity or the price (as the monetary expression of the value of the commodity). The proportion in which a whole neither larger nor smaller. It is therefore an erroneous preconception to assume that a *rise in wages raises the prices of commodities*; it only makes profit (surplus value) fall." TSV II, p. 417-8 Marx clearly thought that if there is a change in the cost to the capitalist for the total commodity output whose value remains a fixed magnitude (as it does throughout the transformation exercise), then there would be an equal decrease in surplus value (profit). At any rate, it is certainly surprising that instead of allowing for the rise in cost price to yield a compensating decline in surplus value, Marxists have thought it best to stand by this evident student of Ricardo in allowing a rise in the cost of paid (direct and indirect) labor upon transformation of the inputs to lead to a rise in prices. This is clearly ruled out by Marx on the grounds Ricardo provides in his critique of Smith. Yours, Rakesh
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