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On prices and value, Marx writes,
“What
then is the relation between value and market prices, or between
natural prices and market prices? …The market price expresses
only the average amount of social labour necessary, under the average
conditions of production, to supply the market with a certain mass of a
certain article. It is calculated upon the whole lot of a commodity of
a certain description. So far the market price of a commodity coincides
with its value.
On
the other hand, the oscillations of market prices, rising now over,
sinking now under the value of the natural price, depend upon the
fluctuations of supply and demand. The deviations of market prices from
values are continual, but as Adam Smith says, “The natural price
is the central price to which the prices of commodities are continually
gravitating. Different accidents may sometimes keep them suspended a
good deal above it, and sometimes force them down even somewhat below
it.
But
whatever may be the obstacles which hinder them from settling in this
center of repose and continuance, they are constantly tending towards
it.”
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Relating
to value and profit, Marx says, “ …it is nonsense
to suppose that profit…spring from surcharging the prices
of commodities or selling them at a price over and above their
value.
The
absurdity of the notion becomes evident if it is generalized. What a
man would constantly win as a seller he would constantly lose as a
buyer…To explain therefore the
general nature of profits, you must start from the theorem that, on
average, commodities are sold at their real values, and that profits are
derived from selling them at their values, that is, in proportion to
the quantity of labour realized in them.”
(from
Value Price and Profit pp.36/37)
So,
selling price may vary according to supply and demand but will center
around the natural price, or value, and profits are derived from
selling commodities at their value, i.e. they already contain the
workers’ surplus value embedded in them.
Thus
workers are exploited at the point of production, not the point of sale
of the commodity.
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