Nevertheless, according to Marx, market value, that is price of production, is generally stable, solid and constant over time. It is so because over time and across all spheres,“ competition brings about … the establishment of a uniform market value and market price out of the various individual values of commodities”[ 53 ], which is articulated in individual prices of production for individual spheres and a general totalizing price of production for all spheres of production combined. For Marx, eventually,“ the laws of the capitalist mode of production develop in their pure form, [ with ] the approximations [ becoming ] all the more exact, the more the capitalist mode of production is developed”[ 54 ], ultimately resulting in all commodities being“ sold at their actual values”[ 55 ], i. e., at their singular, unifying, generalized price of production. In sum, it is Marx’ s belief, that the anarchy of market prices eventually come to represent, with exactitude, their inherent market values, i. e. their prices of productions, due to the fact that if supply and demand regulate market price, or rather the departures of market price from market value [ i. e. price of production ],… market value [ i. e. price of production ] in turn regulates the relationship between demand and supply or the center around which fluctuations of demand and supply make the market price oscillate.[ 56 ]
As a result, for Marx, market prices are increasingly regulated to conform to their inherent market values as market values exert pressure on supply and demand, within the spheres of production, to remain as close as possible to the particular orbits of market values, i. e. prices of production. This intensifying pressure applied to supply and demand by market values, as well, increasingly tethers anarchic market prices to the market values themselves, as market values, i. e. prices of production, over time come to eventually regulate and accurately reflect these unpredictable market prices. Ultimately, for Marx, the result is the unification of market price and market value across all spheres of production under the regulating mechanism of one generalized price of production, which itself accurately reflects an overarching law of value and its inner generalized regulating mechanism of socially necessary labor-time.
Consequently, overarching this ever-intensifying unification process of market prices and prices of production, according to Marx, is the regulating mechanism of socially necessary labor-time, i. e. the law of value, which underpins, controls and regulates, in general, prices of production, i. e. market values. In keeping with Marx’ s analysis, the law of value, that is, generalized socially necessary labor-time, is able to regulate and control prices of production by pressuring labor-power, commodity-markets and, in general, all spheres of production to conform to certain social average standards; social average standards, which in turn influence prices of production, prices of production, which in turn influence market prices. According to Marx,
this is in fact the law of value as it makes itself felt, not in relation to the individual commodities or articles, but rather to the total products at a given time of particular spheres of … production … [ The law stipulates ] that not only is no more labor-time devoted to each individual commodity than necessary, but out of the total social labor-time only the proportionate quantity needed [ necessary labor-time ] is devoted to the various types of commodity.[ 57 ]
This determination of the appropriate quantity of finite necessary labor-time applied to each type of commodity production within a and between specific spheres of production is dictated by social need, namely, according to Marx, the individual commodity’ s ability in“ satisfying in and of itself a social need”[ 58 ]. And on a broader scale this“ social need, i. e. the use-value on the social scale,… appears decisive for the quota of total social labor-time that falls to the share of the various particular spheres of production”[ 59 ].