1. The neoclassical theory of prices is a circular argument.
Léon Walras' Elements of Pure Political Economy
2. Markets par excellence exist only on paper.
To postulate that all economic exchange values have more in common than being prices, and then to take this for granted without having really demonstrated it, is as wrong as any other petītiō principiī. This error, inadvertently (paralogism) or deliberate (sophism), leads to the conclusion that in markets some are so par excellence. The accreditation of the assumption of supply and demand as the primary controller of all prices makes stock exchanges and auction houses look more than most others to be real markets. These so-called markets par excellence have a characteristic normally absent from other markets of great importance. Unlike the labor market and the markets for most products sold by enterprises in particular, they give access to the realization of surplus values, i.e. to transfers by means of exchanges.
3. In the real estate market and on the stock market, the intermediaries are enterprises.
On the markets for prestigious and second-hand collections, intermediaries are also enterprises that sell a service. The prices of these services are likely to be regulated by the profitability of these enterprises. On the other hand, the prices of the objects on which the transactions relate are governed solely or mainly by the immediate relationship between supply and demand, with no other regulation than the sale to the highest bidder.
4. On raw material markets, particularly from agriculture, mining, forestry or fisheries, inter-enterprise sales to the highest bidder are also practiced.
The prices resulting from these sales are also governed by the immediate relationship between supply and demand. They have nevertheless another controller of their level. The sellers are indeed enterprises. When the profitability of a sector made up of these enterprises proves to be significantly and durably higher than the TMNP and when entry into this sector remains open, competition from new entrants has the effect of bringing the profitability of the TMNP closer together.
5. In other markets supplied by enterprises, competition tends to eliminate sales to the highest bidder.
When buyers in one of these other markets can opt for one of the sellers' competing offers, less haggling becomes advantageous. The time taken by transactions is reduced, the buyers' mistrust of sellers is less, and trade can become more industrial. Enterprises that make these advantages characteristics of their offer come to be more profitable than those that focus on selling to the highest bidder, where competitors have established that its abandonment succeeds.
6. The bulk of enterprises' sales are in markets where competition has eliminated best-selling sales.
As a result of this elimination, the prices charged on these markets are not governed by an immediate relationship between supply and demand. Profitability then becomes, insofar as competition is organized for this purpose, more closely regulating these prices, as we will establish in the rest of this chapter.
7. The regulation by profitability, in the unequivocal sense recalled below, of the greatest number of prices at which firms sell, is potentially much finer than economic theory has admitted so far.
However, this controllery law, set out later in this chapter, only works at full capacity if competition between enterprises is organised for this purpose. To cite just one case here, it is under this law that the ban on commercial banks from being both "retail" and "investment" enhances the viability of the market economy much more than it undermines it.