Monopoly Price

In order to make monopoly profits, monopoly capitalists, by virtue of their monopoly position, set market prices higher or lower than the value of commodities or the price of production when selling commodities or buying the means of production. Its basic formula is: monopoly price = cost-price + monopoly profit, or monopoly price = constant capital + variable capital + monopoly profit.

Monopoly price is divided into monopoly high price and monopoly low price. Monopoly high price means that the monopoly capitalist sells commodities at a price higher than their value and the price of production; monopoly low price means that the monopoly capitalist purchases the means of production at a price defined below the value or price of production. Both prices can make extra monopoly profits. Long-term artificial manipulation of monopoly prices by monopolistic industries inhibits free fluctuation of market prices and makes monopoly prices deviate from the price of production and value. But from the social plane, monopoly price does not deny the law of value; it is actually the concrete form of appearance of the law of value in the stage of monopoly capitalism. The reason for this is that: (1) There is a coincidence of the sum of the prices of the commodities in the whole society with the sum of the value of the commodities. That part of the monopoly profit made by the monopoly capitalist through monopoly high price or monopoly low price comes partly from the extra surplus-value produced by the enterprise, and partly from the transfer of value and surplus-value, i.e., part of the profit lost by other commodity producers and part of the value plundered from the vast number of domestic and foreign laborers. (2) The value of commodities in the whole society still depends on the socially necessary labor-time spent in producing commodities. The monopoly price cannot change the sum of the values of the whole society; it is only a lever to redistribute the value of commodities and surplus-value in favor of the monopoly capitalists. (3) The monopoly price cannot be completely divorced from the value of the commodity. To a certain extent, the change of the monopoly price is subject to the constraints of relations of demand and supply and competition, and the monopoly capitalist cannot raise or lower the price of the commodity at will.

In the stage of monopoly capitalism, monopoly prices are an important factor in deepening the decay and parasitism of capitalism, embodying both the exploitation of the proletariat and the oppression of small producers by the monopoly capitalists. By manipulating the redistribution of the commodity value and surplus-value, monopoly capitalists inevitably cause the squeeze of non-monopoly enterprises, which will intensify the various contradictions inherent in capitalist society.