LAUSR

s from the input values, for two reasons. First the input values are irrelevant for his argument that prices are the form of appearance of values, and that profit is the form of appearance of surplus value. Second, the simultaneous transformation of input and output values would make undetectable the production and distribution of surplus value, which is the conceptual core of the transformation. If the inputs and outputs were transformed simultaneously, only two opposing and seemingly unrelated relative price systems would exist, one in values and the other in prices. (Saad-Filho’s emphasis: 112) Certainly, the conceptual model breaks the process into its conceptual parts. Saad-Filho considers that ‘if the transformation pivots around the OCC, the value of the means of production is immaterial, and their transformation cannot affect the outcome’ (113). If the VCC and OCC vary in the necessary equal and opposite proportions then changes to the VCC can equalise out changes to the OCC so that all value compositions remain the same. This assumes away the premise of the transformation question, so can hardly be deemed a solution to it. Saad-Filho explains ‘the price vector cannot be calculated from Marx’s transformation procedure’ as it addresses the mass of commodities and not ‘the unit’ and ‘abstracts from the transformation of input values’ and ‘the money commodity’ (112). The transformation of values into prices of production has a ‘four-fold impact’ on Capital: (1) exchanges are not directly regulated by the labour time socially necessary to reproduce each commodity; (2) price is a relatively complex form of social labour; (3) it permits a more complex understanding of value analysis; (4) it explains the distribution of labour across the economy (115). ‘Even though it was left incomplete’, it develops ‘his reconstruction of the capitalist economy’ and ‘substantiates the claim that living labour alone, and not the dead labour represented by the means of production, creates value and surplus value’ (Saad-Filho’s emphasis 115). As dead labour cannot be compelled to produce value, is any further substantiation required? For of course, this claim cannot be substantiated at this level of abstraction, rather it is the premise of the entire argument. The reason living labour is the only source of value is simply because human production is undertaken by humans. Only humans can be compelled to produce more value than they cost to produce. Physically inputs equal outputs as outputs are merely physically transformed inputs. The value of an output is the amount of value destroyed in producing it, the cost of production. The total of abstract labour on the output side is the same as the abstract labour on the input side. But some of that abstract labour is unpaid, so called surplus value. In the process of production, value is redistributed from the class of producers to the class of owners of the means of production. Surplus value is a real cost but to the producers, not the owners. As only humans can be paid, so only humans can be unpaid, so only humans can have surplus value extracted from them. As surplus value is merely a form of value, so only humans can produce value. As physical commodities are incommensurate (a condition for production) the only thing that makes all (past, present and future) commodities exchangeable is that all commodities (have, do and will) contain human labour. Value is a form of private property or ownership, a property relation. Value determines the distribution of physical things between people, who owns what and who does not. Only living people may own things. Ownership means one person has the use of an object to the