[OPE-L] The Antichrist (addition)

From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sun Apr 29 2007 - 09:52:05 EDT


Another locus for the market price/production price controversy is Marx Cap.
3 ch. 38:

"We have previously shown that this price of production is not determined by
the individual cost-price of every single industrial producer, but by the
average cost-price of the commodity under average conditions of capital in
the entire sphere of production. It is, in fact, the market-price of
production, the average market-price as distinct from its oscillations. It
is in general in the form of the market-price, and, furthermore, in the form
of the regulating market-price, or market-price of production, that the
nature of the value of commodities asserts itself, its determination not by
the labour-time necessary in the case of any individual producer for the
production of a certain quantity of commodities, or of some individual
commodity, but by the socially necessary labour-time; that is, by the
labour-time, required for the production of the socially necessary total
quantity of commodity varieties on the market under the existing average
conditions of social production."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch38.htm

We see here the idea that the production price is an "average market price"
which is a "regulating price". Later (ch. 45), Marx suggests this regulation
also means that product-values will gravitate towards production prices,
rather than the other way around:

"The premise in this case is that no barrier, or just an accidental and
temporary barrier, interferes with the competition of capitals - for
instance, in a sphere of production, in which the commodity-values are
higher than the prices of production, or where the surplus-value produced
exceeds the average profit - TO REDUCE THE VALUE TO THE PRICE OF PRODUCTION
and thereby proportionally distribute the excess surplus-value of this
sphere of production among all spheres exploited by capital."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch45.htm

Jurriaan


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Apr 30 2007 - 00:00:17 EDT