As Marx notes,
“The foregoing statements have at any rate modified the original assumption concerning the determination of the cost-price of commodities. We had originally assumed that the cost-price of a commodity equalled the value of the commodities consumed in its production. But for the buyer the price of production of a specific commodity is its cost-price, and may thus pass as cost-price into the prices of other commodities. Since the price of production may differ from the value of a commodity, it follows that the cost-price of a commodity containing this price of production of another commodity may also stand above or below that portion of its total value derived from the value of the means of production consumed by it. It is necessary to remember this modified significance of the cost-price, and to bear in mind that there is always the possibility of an error if the cost-price of a commodity in any particular sphere is identified with the value of the means of production consumed by it. Our present analysis does not necessitate a closer examination of this point.”
(Capital III, Chapter 9)
In other words, when Marx first set out his calculations of the transformation of values into prices of production, he only carried that as far as the transformation of the output prices. However, as he sets out, here, many outputs are simultaneously inputs for other spheres of production. If the value of coal is transformed into a price of production, for example, and is changed from £10 per ton, to £15 per ton, this coal is also, simultaneously, an input into the production of, for example steel. But, in calculating the price of production of steel, the former, untransformed value of £10 per ton was used, whereas, in this capitalist economy, in which commodities sell at prices of production, rather than values, the steel producer must actually pay £15 per ton for it, and this consequently, changes the calculation of their own organic composition of capital, and rate of profit, and consequently, their price of production. It is the point that Marx makes above, when he says,
“Suppose, the average composition is 80c + 20v. Now, it is possible that in the actual capitals of this composition 80c may be greater or smaller than the value of c, i.e., the constant capital, because this c may be made up of commodities whose price of production differs from their value.”
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