The implication of this is that the valuation used for the 'value composition of capital' had to be accordingly modified, since the labor-values used throughout Book I was an expedient he used in order to not excessively complicate the communication of this theory.
Marx's concept of constant capital is the monetary value of the plant, equipment and materials that are tied up in the production process.
This relationship has both technical and social aspects, reflecting the fact that simultaneously consumable use values and commercial exchange-values are being produced.
The estimation procedure is not simple, for example because compensation of employees includes more than wages and part of the tax levy constitutes an element of surplus value.
The variable capital actually tied up by an enterprise at any point in time will usually be less than the annual flow value, because wages can in part be paid out of revenues received from ongoing product sales.
By any of these measures, the plant- and machinery-intensive oil industry would have a high organic composition of capital, while labor-intensive businesses such as catering would tend to have a low OCC.
Insofar as the trajectory of capitalist development is, as Marx argues, ruled by the quest for extra surplus-value, the economic fate of the system can be summarised as an interaction between the tendency of the profit rate to decline, and the factors that counteract it: in other words, the permanent battle to reduce costs, increase sales and increase profits.
The hypothetical final result of the rising OCC would be full automation of the production process, in which case labour-costs would be near-zero.
Also, while market competition would establish a ruling price level for a type of output, different enterprises would use more or less labour to produce it.
In a third interpretation, Marx aspired both to relate values and prices, and offer a social critique, because both of these were necessary to make his case truly convincing.
Here, the separate concepts of product-values and product-prices are regarded as essential for a theory of market dynamics and capitalist competition; it is argued that price behaviour in aggregate cannot be understood or theorised about at all without reference to value-relations, explicitly or implicitly.
There has been a lengthy theoretical and statistical dispute among Marxian economists about whether the organic composition of capital really does tend to, or has to rise historically, as Marx predicted, or, to put it differently, whether in aggregate technological progress has a "labor-saving bias", and causes the average profit rate to decline.
One sort of question asked is, why capitalists would introduce new technology, if doing so would result specifically in a lower profit rate on capital invested?
[4] It is difficult to find industries where the secular historical trend is one of an increase in the share of wages in the total capital outlay.
However, it has been argued that the value of physical capital is notoriously difficult to measure empirically in an accurate way; and statistical time-series for economic variables over long periods are also susceptible to errors and distortions.
In that case, operating costs are reduced in a short span of time, or cheaper alternatives substitute for the inputs traditionally used.
Much less discussed in the economic literature is the effect on the organic composition of capital of the growth of the services sector in the developed countries.