Does market price fluctuate around cost of production or around value?

Value.

Profit comes from the difference between value and cost of production, so market price fluctuating around cost of production would tend toward no profit/capital accumulation at all.

Then why does marx say price fluctuates around cost of production?

Like pointed out, Marx writes over and over that price fluctuates around cost of production in Wage Labour and Capital, for example.

The surplus value is that you can make men work even after they have realized the value they need to live.

A laborer needs to live. There are more labourers looking for a living then there are livings being offered. They will by virtue of competition enter into a race to the bottom with one another - they will take the bare minimum not te be the guy left out starving.
Capitalist 1 pays them enough to live for 6 hours labour, and capitalist 2 pays it for 12 hours. Both capitalists pay the same, but 1 gets less labour. Less material will have been produced for the same wage, the same cost.
At the end of one cycle, capitalist 2 has produced more commodities at the same wage cost, and thus more value at his disposal to start the second cycle. His operation will get bigger compared to capitalist 1 until capitalist 1's high wage is eclipsed when you calculate the average wage.
(don't sweat the cost of raw materials too much, if you think about that for a second you realize that does not matter here)

The surplus value is realized because of the power relation between the capitalist and the labourer - not wanting to starve on the one hand, and being able to offer a living for the highest possible time-price.

It's admittedly been a while since I've read any Marx, but this really confuses me. I know there must have been at least a few verbatim instances of him explicitly saying that market price tends toward value.

We need a leftcom quick.

You don't see what I mean. lets say 1000 dollar was spent on tools and raw materials and 1000 dollars on wages. The cost of production is 2000$. But if we look at the value its a different story. We take that 2000$ and add the surplus value the worker wasn't paid for. And we see the new value is perhaps 2500$ Thus value and cost of production cannot be the same thing.

And I re-read Wage Labor and Capital a few months ago. I'm almost POSITIVE he said that capitalists, in theory, ALWAYS sell commodities at or around their true value.

Jesus Christ you niggers. If you don't understand the LTV then don't respond to the thread.

The value of raw materials is included in the value of a commodity, and is based on the socially necessary labor time used to extract said material.

That doesn't contradict what I said.

Cost of production is less than the commodity's value because of surplus value extraction. This means that the profit comes from the difference between selling the commodity at its value and the cost of production.

This quote might be relevant:

From the section By what is the price of a commodity determined? in Wage Labour and Capital.
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ch03.htm

The sale price would have to come down though once market effects take hold and competition drives prices down from their value and to their CoP.

wewlad. So no one can agree on what marx said?

I'll ask my question more clearly
Cost Of production clearly does equal value.
Cost of production would be raw materials and machines + wages. It doesn't account for surplus value. Does marx think that price fluctuates around value or around cost of production?

I've looked through it and it seems like Marx used different terminologies depending on the work.

In WL&C he says that commodities are sold at their cost of production. But in Value, price, Profit we have this:

Yeah sorry you're good.

I meant to link to

Well it can't be both so which does he actually think? Was he just using Cost of production as some sort of abstraction?

No, you don't get it. Whether or not 500$ in surplus is realized depends on what the 1000$ in wages pays for. If it pays to add 1000$ in value, the end value of the operation will be 2000$. If the 1000$ in wages adds 1500$ in value, you end up with 2500$.
Simple thought experiment. A labourer needs 1kg of grain a day to live, he is paid by the Pharaoh 1kg of grain for 12h work. In that 12 hours he harvests 2kg of grain on the Royal farms. Clearly, 2kg of grain is realized at a cost of 1kg. He realized his own wage in 6 hours.

They become equal once the market is saturated though, as at that point overproduction starts to play and capitalists undersell one another to move the overstock.

I'm guessing that in WL&C he used "cost of production" to mean "total sum of all materials and labor". This would, indeed, just be a synonym for the commodity's true value because it doesn't take into account the fact that the capitalist isn't actually PAYING the total sum of all materials and labor.

I don't get your argument. The cost of production excludes surplus value so its essentially C+V without an S.

Do I sound like I've read everything that Marx said?

didn't see your flag.

…and

The answer is value.

That is possible. Wage-Labor and Capital was one of his earlier works and he didn't have all of his terminology sorted out. He didn't make a distinction between labor and labor-power, for example.

I am looking through pic related right now to try and find where he said that prices fluctuated around cost of production. If anyone knows what chapter it is in let me know.

Chapter 3 By what is the price of a commodity determined?

By what is the price of a commodity determined?
By what are wages determined?

Something isn't right here…

I'm at work.

Why are you shitposting on leftypol at work?

How is that an excuse for using Chrome?

Like seriously, you need to join the Mozilla cool kids or accept being a loser.

pleb

Are you even a socialist?

What do you do at work?

The laptop I'm on is a chromebook. It only runs chrome unless I changed the operating system. I could put a light distro on it, but it isn't my primary computer so I don't feel like putting in the energy.

...

sorry comr8

F

OUT

Just kidding

Well… What have you concluded?

My bad, I misread. And my opening post was wrong. Price fluctuates around value. Cost of production and total value of the end products are different because human labour power can create additional value above the value needed to sustain the labourer, which is what is paid to him in wages, and is thus counted as cost.

The whole chapter he uses cost of production to refer to what prices fluctuate around. I am befuddled.

I see three potential interpretations:

1. He really does mean cost of production (cost of labor-power + constant capital), and the current mainstream understanding of the LTV is incorrect.

2. Cost of production means something different than price of production, which is what, constant capital + cost of labor-power, is usually called.

3. Marx did not yet have his terminology sorted out yet he wrote Wage-Labor and Capital.

I'm almost positive that this is it. Wage-Labor and Capital seems like the exception rather than the rule, which would indicate that he was just using a different terminology when he wrote it.

Couldn't it also be
4. Marx doesn't want to explain value so he uses a sort of abstraction that is on the surface true to explain to newbies.

where does he say value determines market price?

Value, Price, Profit and it's been FOREVER since I slogged through it, but I'm pretty sure in Capital as well.

Here's from Capital, Volume III, Chapter 45. It doesn't totally answer the question but it rules out some possibilities.

Well that rules out #1.

fuck this shit

what did he mean by this

I thought price fluctuates around cost of production, then it turns out that that's either wrong or using different terminology than the rest of Marx' work.

It's all good, comrade. Marx and Engels successful explained the LTV to semi-illiterate dockworkers. It's not like it'll take much time to fine-tune your understanding.

Man, I hate to be one of those "wrong generation" types but I can't help but feel like capitalism has been immensely dumbing down society that you average literate person would struggle with this shit when uneducated workers of centuries past could get it without much problem.

To be fair, since Marx we've had 150 years of capitalist propaganda to completely fuck up people's understanding of profit, price, wages, capital, etc.

It's actually very intuitive which is why workers of the past so easily understood and accepted it. They weren't indoctrinated like workers now.

I'm a bit of a brainlet, but i remember someone posted file related and it talked about the LTV and Marx's terminology. I hope it can help.

Even if you aren't indoctrinated its still complicated.

I think I got. This is from Chapter X of Capital Volume III.

So it does include surplus value?

It would appear so. There is a distinction to be made between average profits, and profits in the abstract, but basically yes.

Actually you are describing cost-price (chapter 1, book 3).
If I'm not mistaken, this go like this:
Cost-price=c+v
Price of production=c+v+some profit rate (dude, transformation problem, ayy lmao)
Value of commodity=c+v+s

As for the OP question, I don't really know the answer. I don't even know by what he means "cost of production"

At complete eqalibrium is all profit at the average rate of profit? That would mean at equalibrium price of production = Value.

The Nazbol is correct. Cost-price is what one would normally think of as "cost of production". Price of production is the sum of cost-price and average profits, which are primarily composed of surplus value.

See

Well, will check it out, thx
leftcoms always saving Holla Forums on LTV

I believe so. On a given interval, at equilibrium, all profit should be equivalent to surplus value. This means that C + V + S would be equal to C + V + Average profits.

Of course (:

No - price of production is already the hypothetical "equilibrium" (not a concept Marx used) price; i.e., assuming all industries have the average rate of profit. This is different from value in general.

In the aggregate, total values = total prices of production = total prices, but not in the particular case. In the so-called "equilibrium", prices = prices of production but these are not going to necessarily equal values.

Again, this is only true in the aggregate - i.e. total profit = total surplus value.

This is correct, but should be implied. Otherwise, we wouldn't need terms to differentiate surplus value from profit.

The LTV was founded when there wasn’t mineral scarcity. Which there is now so raw resources are now worth more then simply the labor put into them because there a finite amount of them.

If by "worth," you are referring to price, then you are correct.

If by "worth," you are referring to value then you are incorrect.

Scarcity of resources can increase value by increasing the amount of labor that is required to obtain them.

It can also increase price without influencing value, by causing supply to fall.

Who fucking cares? Marx isn't Jesus Christ or something. What do you think?

So why does value matter?

What really matters is the price, no?

It's another useless distinction like personal/private property.

from www.mtholyoke.edu/~fmoseley/lrcgpric.html

Value is the long run average of prices. Immediate competition does not pressure towards SNLT, but prices of production which are pressured by profit rates.

Wrong.

Here's a hint: people LEARN THINGS and change their fucking mind, and often they don't think people will seriously worship everything they wrote, so they don't see a reason to mention a piece they wrote long ago which they assume no one will be reading anyway just to point out they no longer believe that old shit.

When will you people finally read?

that has nothing to do with what OP is asking for you moron

Learn to read, you theorylet ;)

oh yeah, i suppose you create some good theoretical stuff don't you?

what did he mean by this

Oh, I have no doubt about it. I mean, even before Marx, Statesmen knew it was dangerous to give proles too good an education. But I think that at some point in the 20th century, Porky began trying to "fine-tune" the collective idiocy. First, let me preface this by saying, while I believe the following phenomena are real, I don't think they're a concerted and deliberate effort i.e. a conspiracy, but rather simple capitalist class interest converging in a very, very unfortunate way.

Porky essentially wants proles to do 3 things: produce, consume, reproduce. On the first they have been always exploited, obviously, and in ever-increasingly ingenious ways. The most significant now is probably how American real wages have been stagnant since the 70s while worker productivity kept on climbing as normal, which might yet prove to be one of capitalism's most important graphs.

About consumption, think like a porky and imagine your ideal consumer. Which traits would define it? Poor impulse control, low boredom threshold, short attention span, gullibility, bad budgeting skill, vulnerability to fads, low quality standards, preference for disposable pop culture over actual culture, looking up to familiar authority, ignorance of consumer protection laws and good habits, a general lack of worldliness and so on and so on *shniff*. Now what demographic best fits this bill? Children. Obviously Porky can only get kids to buy so much crap (thanks for nothing, child labor laws!), no matter how much he tries (google for "nag factor" and be depressed). So instead he infantilizes society at large. The average "serious" movie is as artistically sophisticated as a crayon coloring book; journalistic pieces are indistinguishable from Weird Twitter tripe; cartoons supposedly aimed at children are instead the realm of young adults; modern journalists are quite literally incapable of describing world events without resorting to Harry Potter or Star Wars similes; out with the study, in with the man cave; creative activities, not just in the artistic sense but in the sense of literally bringing new things into being, is eschewed for purely consumptive habits; public education only ever gets dumbed down; etc. Everyone is driven towards becoming a manchild. (I would just like to point out that all of this relates to how capitalism already destroyed Western culture, replacing it with itself while blaming karltural marxists.)

As for reproduction, well the tendency of fertility to decrease is one Porky hasn't solved yet. This has largely material reasons, but as it relates to my previous point, an infanitilized society has the tendency to drive fertility even more downwards, despite the capitalist superstructure being absolutely drowning in titillation and a debasement of sexuality, largely for marketing. This has two side effects: one is that duh-generation increases; second, and far more worrying, is the nigh unavoidable exposure of children to sexuality at decreasing ages, and the ensuing precocious start of their sexual activites. And the funny thing is, neither seems to have an appreciable effect on raising fertility rates (which is very debatable, since we can't know what the rates would be if oversexualized culture vanished). So then, Porky's still on the lookout to get more babbys. He's using mass immigration as a stopgap measure for now, but that can't last forever for a host of factors. Sooner or later, he'll either have to introduce planning into capitalism in order to sustain a stationary economy, or enforce fascistic natalist policies. Guess which one he'll prefer.

Let's analyze a theorylet's lack of knowledge of words, for it seems this is even more important than his lack of theory.

1) Prices of production is what Marx talks about, not costs of production. A price of production is the markup of profit which includes the cost of production. It has nothing to do with value. A price of production can be above, below, or at the value price.

Value is SNLT, price is not. Cost of production is costs of inputs (labor + capital tools + materials), while prices of production are the actual prices necessary to gain profit and not just be even. No business aims at covering mere costs of production. Value is only the gravitational point of long run prices. The real manifestation of price at any moment is entirely explained by prices of production, rates of profit, and supply/demand. Value, by volume 3 of capital, has literally no explanatory role even by Marx's own admission, and merely becomes a theoretical postulate of his desire to keep the notion of objective value beyond the determining power of the ground of all of capital's prices: wages determined by the wage contract. Marx ends up admitting that value only equals price in the aggregate total of society: total prices = total values. What does this mean for economics? Nothing.

Is there an objective amount of labor to society? Yes. Does this in any way determine value? No, because the individual actuality of value is a social reality dependent on agreement of wills and the desire for things not had.

Literally what the fuck are you talking about

Marx wasn't using his generalization of total prices corresponding to total values as a revocation of the labor theory of value. He was illustrating that, despite exceptions you might find, in the big picture, the LTV holds true across all spheres of the economy. He was saying that exchange values will, on balance, reflect real value if you take a look at the whole system as a generality.

Him and Engels REPEATEDLY state that commodities, as a trend, are sold roughly at their real value. They also repeatedly state that profits come from added surplus value, i.e., from the difference between the exchange value and the cost of production. Which is exactly what I fucking said.

Oh, look at that. A moron does not realize the difference between a final theoretical statement as opposed to random shit that was said over time which is >wrong< by the standard of the very people who said it, and which they reject OPENLY, in their final formulations of a problem.

market price is exchange value, it tends towards the cost of production

kill yourself to everyone in this thread for

Marx said it fluctuates around cost of production because it fucking does you imbeciles.

Some corporations work out and others fail. If it wasn't this way then every company would succeed. Literally think for two seconds animals.

They didn't reject it, you absurdly dense fuck. They EXPOUNDED on it.

Pic related.

***

Aside from…

…everything that you said is correct. This doesn't make you any less of insufferable or incoherent.

...

Coherence looks strange to those used to thinking with shit and like shit.

Basic shit , my dude.

My take:
The question is a false dichotomy.
Prices fluctuate based on:
How much porky is taking of the gains. Industries have different standards for how much porky takes of the cake. Also, if laborers create more value, prices might stay the same, but porky takes more of the cake.
How much value can be created by a laborer. This might change if you get better tools, for example.
Supply and demand. Which are also subject to speculation.
Cost of production, which includes cost of labor and cost of resources.

Prices tend to go towards cost of production.
Labor has the cost of production of what it takes to feed, shelter, clothe, educate, etc the laborer. Prices of labor also tend towards cost of production and also follow supply and demand.
Take note that economists often work under some ideal environment to simplify the explanation. "Ceteris paribus" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceteris_paribus "All other things being equal". When Marx says something about how prices are determined, it probably means, "in most cases, in average, and ignoring random events that don't usually happen," or something like that.

t. someone who hasn't read Marx.

I'm 1/4 through, thanks.

Marx describes it as if the average profit (difference between the market price of a commodity and the cost of production of a commodity?) is 0, in Wage Labour and Capital. But in an economy that's growing, the average profit for the capitalist class is not 0. In a growing economy, if you invest 1000 dollars in some business, you will, on average, have more than 1000 dollars one year later. So I can't really make sense of what Marx is saying in chapter 3 of Wage Labour and Capital, if I didn't just say something unbelievably stupid…

Price of production, and cost of production, mean the same thing. What we would normally think of as cost of production (C+V) is cost-price. The Trot obviously doesn't understand this, but if you are going to to try and call someone out on their lack of theoretical understanding, you should at least get your own semantics straight.

what Adam Smith calls natural price, Ricardo calls price of production, or cost of production,
and the physiocrats call prix nécessaire, because in the long run it is a prerequisite of supply, of
the reproduction of commodities in every individual sphere. But none of them has revealed the difference between price of production and value. We can well understand why the same
economists who oppose determining the value of commodities by labour-time, i.e., by the
quantity of labour contained in them, why they always speak of prices of production as centres
around which market-prices fluctuate. They can afford to do it because the price of production is
an utterly external and prima facie meaningless form of the value of commodities, a form as it
appears in competition, therefore in the mind of the vulgar capitalist, and consequently in that of
the vulgar economist.

Capital, Volume III, Chapter X, Page 144

Your conclusion, is frankly absurd. Of course value is a theoretical postulate, but this doesn't mean it has no explanatory role. It is precisely because it is a theoretical postulate, an abstraction, that it can have an explanatory role. Abstraction, is what makes explanation possible. Those with autism, have trouble understanding abstraction, so it is understandable that this point is beyond you.

In conclusion, Antonio Wolf is a self important faggot who dropped out of college because he was too autistic to cope with intellectual interaction in the real world, and now must reside on the internet, making repetitive, esoteric blog posts about Hegel's most basic concepts.

I fucked up my greentext on that. I hope you can still make sense of it. I also forgot to turn off my Groucho Marxism flag. Praise Boko Haram.

wage labour and capital is literally 21 pages long.

smoking ruins the beauty of cute anime girls

It does help. Anyone confused about what Marx meant by cost of production should just read this. Although as a critique of Marx's use of the LTV it's pretty weak.

OP here. I'm even more confused now. If prices of production are what prices hover around the what does value explain?

Literally everything. Constant capital, variable capital, labor power, and profits are all explained by value. It doesn't directly relate to any measurable phenomenon in the real economy, but it is a necessary variable for understanding any of Marx's conclusions.

Wrong, value is directly related to prices

It explains abso-fucking-lutely-nothing.

It describes the relations of total social labor in society and the total claims on labor via money paid on prices. This is something entirely different to the phenomenon of market prices and is in fact a transcendental condition of markets, but is not determinative of markets themselves.

The ground of all prices is wages. The ground of all wages is the labor contract, and the ground of the labor contract is the outcome of the class struggle and the agreement it solidifies between capitalists, renters, and workers.

Labor in production as such has no value and is not value. Value is a social relation of recognition. That which is not recognized has no value. That which is not paid enough to cover it's price of production is not undervalued, but literally has less value than what it cost to produce. That which is priced above is not overvalued, but really has that value. Marx's desire to have an absolute value which is metaphysically true (and yes, this is a metaphysical claim he is making) is against his very claim that capitalism isa completely social phenomenon rooted in nothing but our social relations. There is nothing about your labor or anyone else's that commands our recognition. Wasted labor is not wasted value, it's simply wasted life.

Moseley and Bryce's PDF posted here cover your confusion. Marx changes terms over time. What they meant once is not what they mean later.

This is why a set terminology is important. It stops ridiculous debates like yours over words rather than structures. This retardation is also something that Marx fucks up in dialectics for most of his life, melding moments with totalities and confusing everything.

Relates is the wrong word. Determined would be better.

I thought price of production determined price.

price of production is a function of value

is this where the whole transformation thing comes in?

No, it's not. The price of production is based on the chain of costs: wages + past products. The price of past products is also wages + past products. The price of RAW material is pure wage. The cost of a wage is logically abso-fucking-lutely-nothing because wages ground all prices. Wages ground wages, and the ABSOLUTE ground of wages is the labor contract. The original wage which sets all future wage ground prices is nothing but an original agreement of wills.

Value as determined by labor time becomes fucking stupid when there is no more resources left.