Saturday 27 July 2024

Value, Price and Profit, IV - Supply and Demand - Part 2 of 2

For the independent commodity producer, this cost of production is the value of the commodities used in their production of the end product, plus the value they add via their own labour. For the capitalist producer, this social cost of production remains, but, now, takes the form of their individual cost of production, comprising the value of inputs, of which the commodity labour-power is just one. For the capitalist, their profit, now, also appears as a cost of production, as an amount they must be paid in return for advancing their capital.  For each capitalist, the social cost of production determines the individual value of the commodity, but the cost of production for the capitalist, is always less than that, the difference being the surplus value/profit.  The market value of a commodity is the aggregate of these individual values, which is equal to its social cost of production, the socially necessary labour-time, required for its reproduction.

As Marx sets out, in the Grundrisse, and Theories of Surplus Value, as far as demand is concerned, the determining factor is not value, but use-value/utility. I either like chocolate or I don't, which determines whether I will demand it or not; I either want two bars of chocolate, or only one. My desire for any of these things will certainly be influenced by its price, but my desire certainly does not determine the price. If I want a bar of chocolate, I have to accept that, to buy it, I have to pay its price, and that price is determined by its social cost of production. Demand can only determine the level of supply/production, not price/cost of production.  It determines the level of supply/production, because producers will not continue to produce quantities in excess of what can be sold at the market value/price of production.

That, however, does not mean, as Mill, Ricardo and Say argued (Say's Law), that there can be no generalised overproduction of commodities, resulting in crisis, and a sharp fall, thereby, in market prices and profits.  A Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17, such an overproduction of commodities clearly can and does arise, where consumers choose to demand money, rather than other commodities.  The crisis, then, is the means by which this overproduction is violently resolved, and during which the least efficient producers are removed, reducing supply.  Of itself, this reduces the market value of commodities (because the market value is the aggregate of all individual values, and the inefficient producers, with higher individual values, are removed), but it is still above the clearing market prices created by the overproduction, so that those market prices rise again, once the overproduction is ended.

But, labour-power is also a commodity, and so its value is objectively determined in the same way. Wages are simply the market price of that commodity. As with any other commodity, that market price may move up or down from that value, but cannot determine the value itself. Moreover, Weston's argument was inconsistent. To argue that the level of wages was determined by supply and demand requires an acceptance that, if demand exceeds demand, then, wages should rise, yet, Weston only wanted to argue that wages could fall.

“If the demand overshoots the supply wages rise; if the supply overshoots the demand wages sink, although it might in such circumstances be necessary to test the real state of demand and supply by a strike, for example, or any other method. But if you accept supply and demand as the law regulating wages, it would be as childish as useless to declaim against a rise of wages, because, according to the supreme law you appeal to, a periodical rise of wages is quite as necessary and legitimate as a periodical fall of wages. If you do not accept supply and demand as the law regulating wages, I again repeat the question, why a certain amount of money is given for a certain amount of labour?” (p 36)

Of course, as Marx says, here, and Engels describes in The Condition of The Working Class, the determination of wages is not a subjective matter, of the will or greed of capitalists, of how much they are prepared to pay workers, but is imminently determined by the interaction of demand for and supply of that labour-power. However, the demand for, and supply of that labour-power are also determined by objective factors.



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