Marx also illustrates the importance of demand, here, in his theory of crises, because it is precisely in this sphere of circulation that the circuit of capital can break down. It's here that the mass of commodities, thrown into circulation, may become blocked, causing a glut, which then results in a fall in the prices of the commodities in circulation. If trains do not move out of the station, the trains elsewhere on the circuit get stopped.
On the one hand, use values are continually being produced and reproduced. And, here, Marx illustrates the problem with historic pricing. Its true, to use the argument of proponents of historic pricing that the house of today cannot be built with the bricks produced tomorrow, but all that tells us is that the actual use values used in production today cannot be those which are not produced until tomorrow. But, that is irrelevant. Commodities, as Marx established in Capital I, are always only considered as individual examples of their species. If I buy two Mars Bars together, they are not identical. If I eat one, I have not eaten the other. Yet, as commodities, as representatives of other commodities of their class, they are identical, in terms of their exchange-value, as opposed to their use value – because both represent equal amounts of average socially necessary labour-time. Indeed, even in terms of their individual value, as opposed to their market value, or exchange-value they will differ, because one bar, will necessarily have embodied a different quantity of concrete labour than the other, even if only to a tiny amount. But, commodities do not sell at their individual value, the amount of labour actually embodied in their production, but according to their market value, i.e. according to the average socially necessary labour required currently for their reproduction.
Their use value would have to be notably different for that not to be the case, just as it would have to be the case that the use value of bricks used in the construction of a house today would have to be notably different to the use value of bricks coming out of the brickworks today and tomorrow, to replace them in the builders' stores, in order that their market value is different. Otherwise, that market value is determined by the labour-time currently required for their reproduction.
“The immobile, independent existence of this world of commodities, of things, is only illusory. The station is always full, but always full of different travellers. The same commodities (commodities of the same kind) are constantly produced anew in the sphere of production, available on the market and absorbed in consumption. Not the identical commodities, but commodities of the same type, can always be found in these three stages simultaneously.” (p 282)
So long as those commodities have not been sold, i.e. that they have not left the sphere of circulation and entered the sphere of consumption, their value is determined by their current reproduction cost, not by their historic price. And, that applies equally to where those commodities comprise intermediate production that forms a component part of constant capital. For example, as Marx describes in Capital III, Chapter 6, if the value of cotton falls, that fall affects the value of all cotton still in the market, including that in the process of being spun into yarn, being woven into cloth, or turned into clothing etc.
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