Thanks to Allin for (3693) and the clarification of his arguments in (3676).
There are two points, relating to points 3 and 4 of his (3676).
I argued in (3692):
Allin's third argument has to do with the third paragraph of Section 2
of Chapter 12 of Volume 3. Allin argues that Marx's conclusion in this
paragraph that a change of wages does not affect the price of production
of an "average" commodities is true whether the cost price of this
"average" commodity is equal to the value or the price of production of
the inputs. In other words, Marx could be assuming here that the cost
price is equal to the value of the inputs.
Allin responded:
No, that's not what I was saying... My attempted clarification of Marx
involved stressing the point that his argument goes through *regardless of
whether or not the price of production of such a commodity (i.e. the
output commodity produced by the capital of average comp.) equals its
value*.
Maybe I have misunderstood Allin's argument, but my interpretation comes
from the following sentences in his (3676)
And this argument goes through irrespective of any price-value deviation
IN THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION. (emphasis added)
As Marx stresses, it doesn't matter -- for the result that the price of
production for sector 2 (of average composition) remains unchanged when the
wage rises -- WHETHER OR NOT THE 'C' FIGURES TRULY REPRESENT VALUES.
(emphasis added)
So it still seems to me that Allin's argument had to do with whether or not
the prices of the inputs were equal to their values, not whether or not the
price of an average commodity as output is equal to its value. Plus Allin
made a similar argument in earlier posts which contributed to my
interpretating him in this way.
However, it doesn't really matter. Allin's clarification of his argument is
still beside the point. My original point in emphasizing this passage was
that Marx is clearly arguing here that the price of production of average
commodities IS EQUAL to their values. Marx made the same point in Chapters
9 and 11. And this equality of the price of production and the value of
average commodities can be true IF AND ONLY IF the cost price component is
THE SAME for both the value and the price of production of average
commodities. This is the main issue between us in the current discussion.
And Allin's argument - that even though the price of an average commodity is
in general not equal to its value, Marx's conclusion that a change of wages
does not affect the price of average commodities is true - does not change
the fact that Marx is arguing that that the price of the average commodity
is EQUAL to its value, with the important further implications just mentioned.
With regard to the final point, I had argued in (3692):
I would like to point out that the premise of [Allin's] fourth argument is
the opposite of the premise of Allin's second and third arguments. There
two earlier arguments presume that the cost price is THE SAME for both the
determination of the value and the determination of the price of
production of commodities thereby acknowledging the considerable textual
evidence to support this interpretation.
Allin responded:
Again, no. I do not accept that "the cost price is the same for both the
determination of value and of price of production", *in the general case*,
and none of my arguments take that as a premise. My view is that the
value of the output commodity equals the sum of the values of the
non-labour inputs, plus the value created by the current labour input.
This is consistent with Marx's statements to the effect that there are
*two* sources of deviation between price of production and value on the
output side (inequality between surplus-value and profit, inequality
between value of inputs and price of inputs).
OK, I accept this clarification (although again I think there are reasons
for interpretating your earlier arguments otherwise, but never mind). I
have responded to Allin's interpretations of Marx's statements about the two
sources of deviation between the price of production and the value of output
in (3680), the last couple of pages, and I again ask interested readers to
refer to this earlier post.
I still think that the overwhelming weight of textual evidence that we have
been discussing, such as the equality of the value and the price of
production for average commodities, supports the interpretation that the
cost price component is THE SAME for both the value and the price of
production of commodities. And my interpretation is based not just on the
passages we have been discussing in Part 2 of Volume 3, but also on the more
general interpretation of Marx's theory that I outlined in (3680), with
emphasis on Marx's theory as a theory of money capital and that the initial
givens in Marx's theory are the sums of money capital consumed in the
production of commodities (i.e. the money constant capital and variable
capital or the money cost price). So I hope that these more general points
will also be taken into consideration. I think that Chapter 1 of Volume 3
provides especially strong and clear evidence to support this interpretation.
Comradely,
Fred