Under capitalism, the manifestation of The Law of Value changes again. Unlike previous systems of commodity production and exchange, commodities do not exchange at their values, but at prices of production. That is because, unlike previous forms of commodity production and exchange, where the producer sells the commodity only in order to obtain money to buy the commodities they need for their own consumption, C – M – C, under capitalism, commodities are produced only in order to obtain profit, and capital is advanced as productive-capital in those spheres where the highest annual rate of profit can be obtained. So, under capitalism, it appears that The Law of Value does not apply, because the prices of commodities are measured neither directly by labour-time (value), nor indirectly by exchange-value, but by market price, which revolves around the price of production. But, here too, as Marx sets out, The Law of Value continues to apply, because it is impossible to arrive at prices of production without first calculating total surplus value/profit, which can't be calculated without calculating the total value of output, and the total value of the consumed constant and variable capital.
In all of these different socioeconomic formations, the underlying physical/material determinants of The Law of Value, as a natural law, continue to operate, but assume different forms, determined by the specific historical conditions, of the particular mode of production.
“The distinction between the important and the unimportant was replaced by the distinction between the economic structure of society, as the content, and the political and ideological form. The very concept of the economic structure was exactly explained by refuting the views of the earlier economists, who saw laws of nature where there is room only for the laws of a specific, historically defined system of relations of production. The subjectivists’ arguments about “society” in general, meaningless arguments that did not go beyond petty-bourgeois Utopias (because even the possibility of generalising the most varied social systems into special types of social organisms was not ascertained), were replaced by an investigation of definite forms of the structure of society.” (p 411)
Having achieved this, it then becomes possible to analyse the actions of individuals per se, but as components of larger groups, whose actions are conditioned by the nature of these social groups, “and reduced to the actions of groups of individuals differing from each other in the part they played in the system of production relations, in the conditions of production, and, consequently, in their conditions of life, and in the interests determined by these conditions—in a word, to the actions of classes, the struggle between which determined the development of society.” (p 411)
There was then no place for the subjectivist view that history is created by individuals without any explanation of what causes these individuals to have certain sets of views, or then to act in particular ways, or why those views should have traction in society.
“Subjectivism was replaced by the view that the social process is a process of natural history—a view without which, of course, there could be no social science. Mr. Struve very justly remarks that “ignoring the individual in sociology, or rather, removing him from sociology, is essentially a particular instance of the striving for scientific knowledge” (33), and that “individualities” exist not only in the spiritual but also in the physical world. The whole point is that the reduction of “individualities” to certain general laws was accomplished for the physical realm long ago, while for the social realm it was firmly established only by Marx’s theory.” (p 411-2)
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