as the sum of the average cost price (goods used up + labour costs + operating expenses) and the average profit reaped by the producing enterprises. Formally, the exchange between Capital and Labour is equal in the marketplace, because, assuming everybody has free access to the market, and an adequate legal-security framework exists protecting people against robbery, then all contractual relations are established through free and voluntary consent, on the basis of juridical equality of all citizens before the law. If that equality breaks down, it can only be, because of immoral behaviour by citizens. But Marx argues that, substantively, the transaction between Capital and Labour is unequal, because: Some economic agents enter the market with large assets they own, as private property, while other enter the market owning very little at all, except their capacity to do work of various kinds. That is to say, the bargaining power and bargaining positions of economic agents are differentially distributed, and this means, that private accumulation of capital occurs on the basis of appropriating surplus labour, either the surplus labour of the workers whom the owner of capital assets hires, or the surplus labour of workers hired by another owner of capital assets. External to the market, goods are produced by workers with a value in excess of labor-compensation, appropriated by the owners of productive capital assets. Marx's reference to unequal exchange refers therefore both to unequal exchange in production, and unequal exchange in trade. Another type of unequal exchange is a corollary of the tendency of the rate of profit to equalize under competitive conditions, insofar as producers obtain the ruling market prices for their output, irrespective of the different unit labor-costs of different producers of the same product. In Das Kapital, however, Marx does not discuss unequal exchange in trade in detail, only unequal exchange in the sphere of production. His argument is that unequal exchange implied by labour contracts, is the basis for unequal exchange in trade, and without that basis, unequal exchange in trade could not exist, or would collapse. His aim was to show that exploitation could occur even on the basis of formally equal exchange. Marx however also notes that unequal exchange occurs through production differentials as between different nations. Capitalists utilized this differential in several ways: By buying a product produced more cheaply in another nation, and selling it at home or elsewhere for a