the sum of all prices is equal to the sum of all values?

[Blanquist]

Can someone explain this to me? what does it mean rockfella can get nothing? what does he want that he cant get? and why cant he get it?


great as may be the divergencies between the prices and the values of commodities in individual instances, the sum of all prices is equal to the sum of all values, for in the final reckoning only the values that have been created by human labour are at the disposal of society, and prices cannot break through this limitation, including even the monopoly prices of trusts; where labour has created no new value, there even Rockefeller can get nothing.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Can someone explain this to me? what does it mean rockfella can get nothing? what does he want that he cant get? and why cant he get it?Not sure exactly. Sounds like the quote is just arguing against the idea that wealth is created in the market through "wise investing". You can make more money by buying low and selling high, but no new wealth is created - just like you can make money while playing poker, but the size of the initial pot doesn't increase or decrease it just gets re-shuffled.

[Blake's Baby]

Labour creates value. Simple as.

An example: gold in the ground is only worth something if you think someone is going to dig it up. In the ground it's useless (and therefore worthless). Mineral rights are only worth what you think can be gained from exploiting them minus the cost of exploiting them, which in the end comes down to labour - digging - and the plant that will help you dig - which is made of metal (that was dug up, forged, and put together - so it's also labour) and all the other overheads (power, derived ultimately from human labour on the coal, gas, metal, etc etc that go to make up the power plants; water, derived from the natural world via the application of human labour to build reservoirs and supply systems; roads, built by people using tools and machines made by other people; etc).

So the labour - both there and then, and all the previous stored labour inherent in the machines and infrastructure - is what turns gold under the ground into gold that you hold in your hand. It is the labour that has led to that underground gold inside some rock being transformed into something useful.

So, Marx is saying that without that transformation, no 'money' can be made, as there's no labour been expended to increase the total social wealth. All that can happen, as Jimmie says, is a re-division of the already-created wealth.