7 Transformation of values into prices of production
7.3 The transformation of input values
a social relation of production or, in quantitative terms, the labour time socially necessary to reproduce each kind of commodity. It can also be seen as the monetary expression of this labour time as direct price, price of production, or market price (see chapter 5). These shifts are due to the refinement of these concepts through their reproduction at greater levels of complexity, which captures increasingly complex determinations of the price form and, therefore, of the value relation. Their detailed study comprises a large part of the body of Marx’s work, and of Marxian value theory more generally.18
We have seen above that the per cent form is convenient, because it highlights the effect on the profit rate of differences in the OCCs of the advanced capitals. However, because it equalises all capitals to £100 regard- less of their actual size, the per cent form changesthe average rate of profit and modifiesthe quantities produced by each original capital:
In our previous illustration of the formation of the general rate of profit, every capital in every sphere of production was taken as 100, and we did this in order to make clear the percentage differences in the rates of profit and hence also the differences in the values of the commodities that are produced by capitals of equal size. It should be understood, however, that the actual masses of surplus-value that are produced in each particular sphere of production depend on the magnitude of the capitals applied . . . [I]t is evident that the average profit per 100 units of social capital, and hence the average or general rate of profit, will vary greatly according to the respective magnitudes of the capitals invested in the various spheres.19
Since the values, surplus values, prices and profits calculated through the per cent form are different from their original magnitudes, it is impossible to calculate the price vector through Marx’s transformation procedure. As the per cent form is necessary to assess the OCC, and since its use precludes the calculation of prices, it cannot be argued that Marx’s main objective in the transformation is to devise a method for the calculation of the price vector.
Although some may find this disappointing or worse, it is hardly surprising, for the transformation ‘problem’ is not primarily about the calculation of prices. It is essentially a qualitativeproblem: the demonstration that price of production is a more complex form of expression of social labour than value, because it reflects the distribution of labour and surplus value across the economy.20 Analysis of the input values is irrelevant to this end, and their consideration may cloud, rather than illuminate, the essential problems at stake.
profit rates across the economy. However, the transformation has another stage, in which the input values and the value money are transformed. This stage is analytically secondary, and it received little attention from Marx;
however, this has been the source of most disputes about the meaning and significance of the transformation.
It is often argued that Marx ignores the transformation of the input values in his procedure. However, this statement is at best incomplete. Marx abstracts from the input values (within the limits discussed in section 6.2), for two reasons. First, the input values are irrelevant for his argument that prices are the form of appearance of values, and that profit is the form of appearance of surplus value. Second, the simultaneous transformation of input and output values would make undetectable the production and distribution of surplus value, which is the conceptual core of the transforma- tion. If the inputs and outputs were transformed simultaneously, only two opposing and seemingly unrelated relative price systems would exist, one in values and the other in prices. Price and profit could not be assessed in the former, and value and surplus value would be absent in the latter. Their intrinsic relationship would be invisible. In contrast, if we follow Marx’s procedure and abstract from the value of the means of production, this dichotomy is avoided and the change in the level of abstraction can be ‘seen’
through the shift of surplus value across branches of industry.
Abstraction from the value of the means of production unveils the distribution of surplus value and the ensuing determination of prices of production, regardless of the systematic modification of the exchange ratios brought about by the transformation. Moreover, it nets out the impact of the transformation of the value of the money-commodity, that would complicate further the relationship between values and prices and obscure the concepts being introduced, especially if the VCC of the money-producing sector were distinct from the social average.21 In sum,there are three reasons why the price vector cannot be calculated from Marx’s transformation procedure:
(a) Marx works with the price of production of the mass of commodities produced per £100 advanced, rather than their unit prices; (b) he abstracts from the transformation of the input values, and (c) he abstracts from the transformation of the value of the money-commodity.22
In other words, the age-old objection that Marx’s transformation is wrong because he failed to transform the value of the inputs is beside the point.
For, if the transformation pivots around the OCC, the value of the means of production is immaterial, and their transformation cannot affect the result.
The same argument can be used to dismiss the critique that Marx ‘forgot’ to transform the value of the money-commodity (or was mathematically incompetent to handle this problem),23 or that he ‘unwarrantedly’ failed to define the problem in terms of unit values and unit prices of production.
Marx’s procedure is adequate for the derivation of the concept of price of production (although not immediately for its calculation), because it separates cause(the performance of labour in production and exploitation through the 88 Transformation of values into prices of production
extraction of surplus value) from effect (the existence of a positive profit rate, and the forces leading to its equalisation across branches).24
Having introduced the concept of price of production Marx’s analysis reaches a more complex level, and the second stage of the transformation may be considered. When the realm of the OCC is superseded and the prices of the means of production and labour power enter the picture, there are two reasons why commodity prices may diverge from their value:
(1) because the average profit is added to the cost price of a commodity, instead of the surplus-value contained in it;
(2) because the price of production of a commodity that diverges in this way from its value enters as an element into the cost price of other commodities, which means that a divergence from the value of the means of production consumed may already be contained in the cost price, quite apart from the divergence that may arise for average profit and surplus-value.25
This change in the point of view, from the conceptual derivation of price to the study of the economy at the level of price, leads to the further determination of the concept of price of production and concludes Marx’s transformation procedure. Whilst the derivation of price departs from the distribution of surplus value abstracting from the value of the means of production and labour power, the calculation of the price vector involves, as is well known, the current technologies of production, the wage rate and the (price-) rate of profit.26 In sum, as was shown in chapter 1, Marx’s method involves not only the progressive transformation of some concepts into others, but also gradual shifts in the meaning of each concept, whenever this is necessary to accommodate the evolution of the analysis.27Having done this, Marx can now claim that his prices of production are:
the same thing that Adam Smith calls ‘natural price’, Ricardo ‘price of production’ or ‘cost of production’, and the Physiocrats ‘prix nécessaire’, though none of these people explained the difference between price of production and value . . . We can also understand why those very economists who oppose the determination of commodity value by labour-time . . . always speak of prices of production as centres around which market prices fluctuate. They can allow themselves this because the price of production is already a completely externalized and prima facie irrational form of commodity value, a form that appears in com- petition and is therefore present in the consciousness of the vulgar capitalist and consequently also in that of the vulgar economist.28 At this stage,
The value of commodities appears directly only in the influence of the changing productivity of labour on the rise and fall of prices of Transformation of values into prices of production 89
production; on their movement, not on their final limits. Profit now appears as determined only secondarily by the direct exploitation of labour, in so far as . . . it permits the capitalist to realize a profit departing from the average.29
Marx’s price theory is two-fold: on the one hand, it is a production cost theory similar to the classical. On the other hand, Marx’s theory is distinctive because he explains the price form through the social division of labour in capitalism, analysed at increasing levels of complexity. The transformation has a four-fold impact upon the structure of Capital. First, it explains why market exchanges are not directly regulated by the labour time socially necessary to reproduce each commodity. Second, it shows that price is a relatively complex form of social labour. Third, it allows a more complex understanding of Marx’s analysis of the forms of value (see below). Fourth, it explains the distribution of labour across the economy.30 Even though it was left incomplete, Marx’s procedure is important because it develops further his reconstruction of the capitalist economy, and substantiates the claim that living labour alone, and notthe dead labour represented by the means of production, creates value and surplus value.
In contrast, approaches that argue that the input values should be taken into account from the start, and that they should be transformed together with the output values, often conflate the roles of living and dead labour in the production of value, and can hardly distinguish between workers and machines in production. The ‘non-transformation of the inputs’ cannot be considered a defect. Rather, it is a featureof Marx’s method. By abstracting from (changes in) the value of the inputs and the money-commodity, Marx locates the source of profit in the performance of labour in production, and carefully builds the conditions in which circulation may be brought into the analysis and add positively to its development.