Fred, I am going to give several shorter replies by breaking up your post up. > >2. Rakesh, as I understand your interpretation, you determine P and S in >a different way (in what seems to me to be the same as the >"standard" interpretation of Marx): > >(4) P = m L = m (Lp + Lc) = m Lp + m Lc > >(5) S = m ( Lc - Lms) > >where Lp is the labor-value of the means of production and Lms is the >labor-value of the means of subsistence. > >Do I understand you correctly? Fred, not at all! The value of the means of subsistence plays NO role in my or Marx's formula of value determination. Commodity value is determined by the indirect and direct labor or past and current or dead and live labor embodied in the commodity, though the quantity of that labor is socially determined. Wages are paid of course to allow the proletariat to purchase means of subsistence; these wages represent variable capital. Due to the duality of labor power, the purchase of labor power allows the capitalist to have more labor objectified in the final product than is represented by either the value of the means of subsistence or the value of the money needed to purchase the means of subsistence. It is this direct objectified labor which enters into the determination of commodity value along with the value of the used up means of production. Again neither the value of the means of subsistence nor the value of the money needed to buy the means of subsistence (or means of production) plays *any role* in the determination of commodity value. I do not subscribe to the standard interpretation. In my interpretation, what changes in volume 3 is not the strictly labor theoretic formula for the determination of value but the determination of the money sums which have to be laid out as variable and constant capital. Once it is demonstrated--and only once it is demonstrated--that the means of production and subsistence could not have sold at value or prices proportional to value, then Marx notes the need for the money sums which have to be laid out as constant and variable capital to be modified. That is, cost price has to be modified. This will not change the total value of the product or its price (since Marx seems to be assuming throughout that the monetary expression of labor value is one)--the direct and indirect labor embodied in a commodity is not, and cannot be changed, by a mere change in the price of the means of production and means of subsistence. To claim otherwise is to be ensared in adding up theory of price. The price transformation of the inputs from simple prices to prices of production can only change how that commodity value is resolved into cost price and surplus value. You seem to think that this will change how surplus value was determined in volume one. I do not see this. Surplus value remains M' minus M. If M changes as a result of the modification of cost price consequent upon the transformation of the inputs, dM still remains as defined in volume one: M' minus M. yours, rb
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