(OPE-L) total values = total prices?

["Gerald A. Levy" <Gerald_A_Levy@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Jurriaan.

> Marx himself explicitly acknowledged in Capital Vol. 3 that the accounting
> identity of total prices=total values, which he assumes in his models on
> the basis that he thinks the quantitative deviations between them cannot
be so
> great, does not really apply in reality, given continual shifts in the
> relationships between socially necessary labour-time and market demand
> during any one accounting period.

The identity, though, was that the sum of values equal the sum of prices
of production.  Yet,  Marx explicitly excluded entire sections of the
economy from the transformation when he stated that monopolies are
excluded.  Yet, the commodities produced by capitalist firms which
are monopolies have value -- even if the market price of those commodities
does not equal their value.  It therefore follows that the claim that the
sum
of value equals the sum of prices can not hold at a more concrete level
of abstraction.

It also holds, if we factor in what you referred to recently as the ongoing
process of  the primitive accumulation of capital which involves plunder
(including, in the most recent period, privatization) that products which
didn't take the commodity-form can now have a price.  Yet another
reason why the sum of value can not equal the sum of prices.

In solidarity, Jerry