It really cannot be clearer than this. Prices of production are specific to capitalist production. Marx's comment about commodity exchange taking place at values rather than at prices of production, clearly requires that these commodities had values, and exchange-values derived from those values, long before capitalism exists. That is rather impossible to conceive if, in fact, the category of value, and The Law of Value, itself is specific to capitalism! In fact, Engels spells it out,
“Starting with this determination of value by labour-time, the whole of commodity production developed, and with it, the multifarious relations in which the various aspects of the law of value assert themselves, as described in the first part of Vol. I of Capital; that is, in particular, the conditions under which labour alone is value-creating...
Thus, the Marxian law of value has general economic validity for a period lasting from the beginning of exchange, which transforms products into commodities, down to the 15th century of the present era. But the exchange of commodities dates from a time before all written history — which in Egypt goes back to at least 2500 B.C., and perhaps 5000 B.C., and in Babylon to 4000 B.C., perhaps to 6000 B.C.; thus, the law of value has prevailed during a period of from five to seven thousand years.”
(Capital III, Supplement, Law of Value)
But, the same is true in relation to surplus value. In Theories of Surplus Value, Marx examines the way Adam Smith, having removed the confusion of the Physiocrats, was able to take the core of their theory, which identifies that the surplus arises in production rather than in exchange, to identify the nature and source of surplus value. The basis is quite simple, which is that the value of products/commodities is determined by the labour-time required for their reproduction. But, the labour-time required for the reproduction of the producer is not the same as this. The working-day is divided into necessary labour and surplus labour.
The independent commodity producer who produces yarn, might work for 10 hours, producing 10 hours of new value in yarn, which they sell for its money equivalent of say £10. But, the yarn producer may only require £5 to buy all of the commodities required for their own reproduction. The £10 of yarn, therefore, consists of £5 (5 hours) of necessary labour, and £5 (5 hours) of surplus labour. So, its quite clear that this £5 of surplus labour represents a surplus value. Indeed, it is the basis upon which the landlord is able to extract a portion of this surplus value as rent, that the money lender extracts a portion of it as interest, the church in tithes, and the state in taxes. Indeed, it is the basis, as this commodity production and exchange develops, and a class of merchant capitalists develops, that these merchants are able to appropriate a portion of this surplus value as commercial profit.
But, as Marx explains at length in Theories of Surplus Value, these conditions exist for thousands of years, prior to capitalism, and, during this time, the role of the antediluvian forms of capital – commercial capital and usurer's capital – are inimical to the development of capitalism itself. It is only the development of specific material conditions in society – the development of large towns, in which large markets for industrial commodities arise, and the development of technologies that enable the productivity of labour to be substantially increased – that creates the conditions for ruined independent commodity producers to become, not serfs, or slaves, as they had previously, but wage workers employed by industrial capitalists.
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