me:
I don't know exactly what's meant by "coexisting on the same level." Surplus-value and profit/interest/rent do not exist on the same level in our minds and in Marx's order of presentation in CAPITAL.
ML:
They coexist on the same level for you if you think there is a real transformation process via the mobility of capitals whereby values are transformed into prices of production; that is inconceivable for inner essences and surface forms.
I don't think that the "transformation" of values to prices of production (or of SV to profit/interest/rent) occurs due to the mobility of capital. (Rather, the special case where values = POPs applies only when such mobility doesn't exist -- or if the rate of surplus-value = 0 or if the OCC is the same in all sectors, etc.) But each commodity has a price (and a POP) and also has a certain quantum of value (which might equal zero). In my earlier language, each commodity has differing characteristics and shared characteristics. The shared characteristics -- values -- are relevant at the macrosocietal level. This refers to Marx's two main "conservation principles," i.e., that (1) the sum of all values (netted to avoid double-counting) equals the sum of all prices (ditto); and (2) the sum of all surplus-values equals the sum of all profit/interest/rent. These rules apply only when the units on both sides of each equation are the same. They also should be read from left to right, with the sum of (surplus) values determining the sum of (surplus) prices. This reading is based on two further principles: (1) in a commodity-producing society, value can only be produced by labor (though value can be redistributed in other ways); and (2) in the same kind of society, surplus-value only arises from the exertion of surplus-labor.
Reference to the order of presentation isn't sufficient to distinguish these levels because one can fall back on the old 'successive approximations' canard.
I don't see why "successive approximations" is a canard. (It might be a poulet, after all.) The idea that in CAPITAL Marx works steadily from a high level of abstraction toward a lower one is not that different from the "successive approximations" view. -- Jim Devine / "Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are." -- Bertolt Brecht
