Alan, are you free to set the monetary equivalent of
value if you at the same time accept Marx's argument
that the price level is set by the labour content of
gold?
Does it not on the contrary determine the MEV, and
so determine it that total prices must equal total
values. This would imply that the equivalence of total
prices to total values has to be understood as a theorem
about the way the monetary system worked.
The question then is whether it was a causually adequate
theorem.
One can of course reject it, and say that gold money
operates just like credit money, and that it is total demand
that fixes the MEV, but plausible as this may be, it would
not be Marx's theory.