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
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