> You can go too far in separating the 'phenomenal' prices from the essential values. Value is real , even if we don't see it directly. Why would that be a surprise? You don't see sub-atomic particles directly, but infer them from evidence. Marx's logical reconstruction of the theory of prices, wages and profits turns around a relation much more real than the epiphenomenal fluctuations in prices, namely the substantial relations of exploiter and exploited, surplus value, which, while never being literally coincident with surface appearances, is nonetheless the determinant of all such.
Isn't the essence-phenomena divide a little undialectical? I think if value exists it's immanent in prices, wages and profits, not 'more real' than them. But in a lot of ways the Vol. 1 conception of value at least is not real, but is an epistemological device, an abstraction.
Mike Beggs