This is a reply to Allin's (3699).
I had argued in (3692) that Marx's discussion of the average commodity
"clearly" assumes that the prices of production of average commodities is
equal to their values.
Allin replied:
The burden of the post to which Fred was responding was an attempt to
show that what Fred here takes as "clear" is in fact not so clear. My
argument was that what Marx was really saying was: It's *as if* these
commodities exchanged at prices equal to their values -- "as if", in the
sense that one gets the same result, that a change in the wage will not
affect price.
In my opinion, Allin's "as if" argument is "clearly" invalid. Marx never
said anything like "it is *as if* the prices of production of average
commodities are equal to their values." Instead he said that prices of
production of average commodities ARE equal to their values. He said this
not only in Chapter 12. He also clearly said this in Chapter 9 in the
passages Alejandro and I have been discussing, before there was any
discussion of the effects of a change of wages (which comes in Chapter 11).
These statements in Chapter 9 are clearly not as "as if" statement that are
only true with respect to the effect of a change of wages. There is no
discussion in this chapter of a change of wages. Rather it is stated as a
general property of average commodities that their prices of production of
average commodities are equal to their values.
Further, as already discussed in a previous post, Marx emphasized in Chapter
11 that prices of production should be determined before there is any
discussion of the effect of a change of wages on prices of production. This
was his main critique of Ricardo - that Ricardo failed to determine prices
of production before he considered the effect of a change of wages. Hence,
for Marx the price of production of average commodities are determined prior
to analyzing the effect of a change of wages and this price of production is
clearly stated to be equal to the value of these average commodities.
Further clear evidence of this general property of average commodities comes
from the Theories of Surplus-Value, Volume 2, in at least two places. On p.
29, Marx stated:
(I)t can in fact happen that the average price (what Marx later called
prices of production and the value of a commmodity coincide. This occurs
when the surplus-value created in sphere B equals the average profit; in
other words, when the relationship of the various components of the
capital in sphere B is the same as that which exists for the total sum of
capitals ...
Then on p. 68, Marx presented a table with five capitals, one of which (II)
has a composition of capital equal to the social average (80c / 20v). Here
again, the price of this average commodity is equal to its value. There is
no discussion of a change of wages. This equality price and value is again
presented as a general property of average commodities. There is no hint
that this is an "as if" property that applies only to the effect of a change
of wages.
As we have discussed, the importance of this general property of average
commodities is that it requires that the cost price be THE SAME for both the
value and the price of production of average commodities, which in turn
implies (and is clearly stated elsewhere) that the cost price is the same
for both the value and the price of production of all commodities. This is
the key point that supports the "single system" interpretations of Marx's
theory and contradicts the "double system" interpretations.
Comradely,
Fred