| This question <3|3> overall <18|20> Hans: <14|27>. |
| Question 69: Is there other surface evidence, other than the variability of exchange proportions, indicating that exchange-value is the expression of some deeper relation of production? |
| [19] Hans: Surface versus the Underlying Fundamentals. Yoda made a comment about my [3] through the web submission form. I'd like to respond to this comment by email, so that others become aware that it is possible to make such comments. |
| Here is my answer to Yoda: |
| Yes, Marx claims that prices are not determined on the market but in production. Commodities get their values not on the market but in production, and exchange-values and prices are the manifestation on the market of the value which they received in production. |
| This does not mean that the market is causally sterile. If demand exceeds supply, then market forces raise the price above the level determined by labor content, and is supply exceeds demand, they depress the price. These temporary deviations of prices from values play an important role because they ecourage the producers to adjust their production schedules. |
| You are asking for other examples in which surface interactions are driven by and mediate causes which are beneath the surface. Perhaps eating is an example. In their selection of foods, people prefer tasty foods. But the taste of a food is only a surface manifestation of what really counts, which is the nutritional content and wholesomeness of the food. For thousands of years there has been a rough correspondence that those foods which are good for you also taste well. Therefore if you go by your taste, you will end up healthy. Modern capitalism, of course, sees here a profit opportunity. It is smart enough to separate these two things and to produce cheap and inferior food which is utterly unhealthy but still tastes well. The obesity and malnutrition so widespread in our society is a sign of a lack of correspondence between surface and the underlying fundamentals. |
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