Fred writes:
> I have not had the time to participate in the discussion of whether or not
> Marx assumed in Volume 1 that individual prices are equal to their values
> (or even to read all the posts carefully), but I think that Duncan has
> recently added an important new element to this discussion, which I would
> like to comment on briefly.
> I mostly agree with Duncan (except for one important point to be discussed
> below). Duncan said (in 1036):
>
> I think it makes the most sense to view Volume I of Capital as an attempt
> to work out the consequences of the labor theory of value AT THE LEVEL
> OF THE AGGREGATE COMMODITY (or, if you prefer, the average commodity).
> The results are supposed to hold good whether or not prices are
> proportional to embodied labor coefficients (if they exist). For
> essentially pedagogical reasons Marx often works through examples on
> the assumption that prices are proportional to embodied labor times,
> but I don't read the text as limiting the conclusions to that
> assumption. (emphasis added)
>
> I agree that Volume 1 of Capital is primarily an analysis of the aggregate
> level of the capitalist economy as a whole
**(the main question is the
> determination of the total amount of surplus-value produced in the
> capitalist economy as a whole),**
[I separated and emphasized this--see below. GS]
> and I also agree that the strict equality
> between prices and values applies only to the aggregate commodity product.
>
> I think that Marx provisionally assumed in Volume 1 that the prices of
> individual commodities, and of subsets of commodities such as the means of
> production and the means of subsistence, are equal to their values, because
> there was no basis for any other assumption consistent with the labor theory
> of value, since the determination of individual commodities, or subsets of
> commodities, are not considered in Volume 1.
** However, this provisional
> assumption plays no essential role in Marx's theory of the aggregate amount
> of surplus-value in Volume 1.**
[Again, my emphasis--see below.]
> The magnitudes of constant capital and
> variable capital are taken as given as the quantities of money-capital that
> initiate the circulation of capital. It makes no difference to the
> determination of the total amount of surplus-value whether or not these
> magnitudes of constant capital and variable capital are equal to the prices
> of the means of production and the means of subsistence. The given
> magnitude of constant capital is the value transferred to the price of the
> product, whether or not this given constant capital is equal to the value of
> the means of production. And the difference between the new-value produced
> by current labor and the given amount of variable capital is the aggregate
> amount of surplus-value, whether or not this given variable capital is equal
> to the value of the means of subsistence.
** The main conclusions of Volume 1
> do not depend in any way on whether or not the prices of individual
> commodities are equal to their values.**
[Again, my emphasis.]
There is at least one step in the argument of Volume I for which the
characterizations isolated above are manifestly not true. This is
Marx's conclusion at the end of Ch. 5, where he argues that
capitalist exploitation *must* be explainable on the basis that all
commodities exchange at their values. In saying this he is clearly
denying that "the main conclusions of Volume I do not depend in any
way on whether or not the prices of individual commodities are equal
to their values", since he is asserting that any case of capitalist
exploitation is institutionally isomorphic to one in which
price-value equivalence holds.
Moreover, there is a two-fold problem with Marx's argument: first, it clearly
does not follow from the arguments given in the chapter. For
example, these arguments [to the effect that surplus value cannot
arise from simple commodity circulation *taken alone* with or without
price-value equivalence] are not inconsistent with the conclusion
that surplus value requires "something ...in the background which is
not visible in the circulation itself" and price-value *disparities*,
and in fact it did in the case of surplus value arising from
proto-industrial merchant's capital--as Marx repeatedly affirms in
his historical analysis.
Second, the conclusion is pernicious in that it has apparently led
generations of Marxist economists to believe that the purchase and
subsumption of the commodity labor power within the capitalist mode
of production is a *necessary* condition for capitalist exploitation,
contrary to marx's explicit and repeated affirmed historical
analysis.
Thus, there is at least one essential case in Volume I where Marx
does not confine himself to the aggregate level of analysis.
Gil