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Marx regards exchange-value as the proportion in which one commodity is exchanged for other commodities. For Marx, exchange-value is not identical to the money price of a commodity. Actual money prices (or even equilibrium prices) will only ever roughly correspond to exchange-values. The relationship between exchange-value and price is ...
Marx aimed to show, that even if all commodities traded exactly at their value (equal exchange), and regardless of short-term price fluctuations, capitalists could still make money from production, since, in the normal business situation, workers always created more value for their employers than was represented by the total wage bill.
This causes people to think value and exchange-value are the same thing, but Marx argues they are not; the content, magnitude and form of value must be distinguished, and according to the law of value, the exchange value of products being traded is determined and regulated by their value. His argument is, that the market prices of a commodity ...
In Marx's theory, a commodity is something that is bought and sold, or exchanged in a relationship of trade. [4] It has value, which represents a quantity of human labor. [5] Because it has value, implies that people try to economise its use. A commodity also has a use value [6] and an exchange value. [7]
However, no surplus value can be created naturally. The labor process simply transforms value from one form into another. Thus, according to Marx, the only way for the capitalist to gain surplus-value is by paying the workers' exchange-value, not their use-value. The difference between these two values is the surplus-value generated.
In the form of society we are about to consider, they are, in addition, the material depositories of exchange value." [5] This was a direct reference by Marx to Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right §63 as Marx adds: A thing can be a use value, without having value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour.
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The value of labor, in this view, covered not just the value of wages (what Marx called the value of labor power), but the value of the entire product created by labor. [ 18 ] Ricardo's theory was a predecessor of the modern theory that equilibrium prices are determined solely by production costs associated with Neo-Ricardianism .