does value and price equate. They are scientifically measurable quantities that perfectly express each other in numerical fashion. In everyday economic dealings, rarely do, according to Marx, individual quantifiable values coincide with their specific prices in the sense that there is constant fluctuations between individual market values and individual market prices. It is only over an extended period of time that“ the various local fluctuations … reciprocally neutralize one another”[ 19 ], in the sense that it is only through an extended period of competition that there is“ the establishment of a uniform market value and market price out of the various individual values [ and prices ] of commodities”[ 20 ]. For Marx, value and price are synonymous when understood at the abstract level of economic totality. Moreover, for Marx, profit and surplus-value are as well synonymous, when understood from a level of economic totality. Logically speaking, for Marx, total value and total price contain within their structures all values and all profits expressed in price, because by the very definition of being totalities, according to Marx, total value and total price must inevitably contain the total sum of surplus-value and the total sum of profit in equal proportions and magnitudes. As Marx states,“ the sum of the profits for all the different spheres of production must accordingly be equal to the sum of surplus values”[ 21 ], due to the fact that“ the sum of prices … for the total social product [ is ]… equal to the sum of … values”[ 22 ]. Total profit and total surplus value are equivalent in the sense that, being aggregate parts of total value and total price at a level of economic totality, they are likewise equivalencies of equal size.
In addition, Marx postulates that because total profit equals total surplus-value, at the abstract level of economic totality, this in turn, means that rate of profit articulated in value is equivalent to the rate of profit articulated in price, price being, for Marx,“ the monetary expression of value”[ 23 ]. The value rate of profit equals the monetary rate of profit, due to the fact that, at the abstract level of economic totality, profit equals surplus-value articulated in money / price. If“ price is the monetary expression of value”[ 24 ], then, simultaneously, price is as well the money expression of surplus value; and furthermore, if profit always equals surplus value at the abstract level of economic totality, according to Marx, then simultaneously surplus value and profit have the same rate and ratio, i. e., a rate and ratio that can be expressed in value and / or in money, simultaneously. Out of this basic supposition, that total value always equals total price at the abstract level of economic totality, Marx, is able to advance a whole series of logical equivalences, which permit Marx to construct a self-enclosed economic value / price apparatus. An apparatus capable of explaining the specific socio-economic phenomena of value, price and profit as mutually interdependent, scientifically quantifiable and always tending towards general overall equalization. It is an economic model that outlines capitalism as predetermined autonomous mechanism, whose logic, expressed in free-standing laws, is programmed towards specific outcomes, regardless of interventions and / or creative influences.
Predicated on the basic assumptions that value is strictly quantifiable socially necessary labortime, and that total value always equals total price at the abstract level of economic totality, Marx outlines a series of economic calculations, and an economic model, explaining how market prices invariably fluctuate in relation to market values; yet, broadly speaking, always reflect a solid ever-increasing sum of scientifically quantifiable value that is perfectly expressed in price. According to Marx, due to competition and the capitalist search for surplus profit, in general, profit, value and price have a tendency to equalize and reflect one another over a long period of time within capitalist society. These have a tendency to equalize over time between each other and between the various spheres of production found across capitalist society, in the end, settling around specific prices of production, prices of production being the average profit on top of production-cost that particular commodities, within specific branches of production, fetch in the marketplace.
Prices of production can be described as the limited price range, or average price, that a specific product or commodities can be exchanged for, priced too high means that a buyer cannot afford the product and priced too low means that a seller cannot cover production-costs and / or make a profit. As a