Abstract
This paper is a reply to David Laibman's latest paper critical of my 2016 book Money and Totality: A Macro-Monetary Interpretation of Marx's Logic in Capital and the End of the “Transformation Problem.” This paper responds to the following points: did I misstate Laibman's position in my previous paper?; the logical priority of the production of surplus-value over the distribution of surplus-value (i.e., the prior determination of the total surplus-value); different starting points: quantities of money capital (Marx) vs. quantities of physical inputs and outputs (Sraffa); is Marx's theory “monetary”?; and (most importantly) is my interpretation of Marx's theory logically incoherent? I argue that Laibman's criticism of logical incoherence is based on the usual fundamental misinterpretation of Marx's transformation of values into prices of production—as a transformation from one set of micro prices (the values of individual commodities) to another set of micro prices (the prices of production of individual commodities). To the contrary, I argue that the logic of Marx's transformation is from macro total price to micro individual prices of production and that this macro-to-micro transformation is logically coherent, so there is no transformation problem in Marx's theory of prices of production.
Highlights
I very much appreciate David Laibman’s continued critical discussion of my book Money and Totality
I will respond to the following points: did I misstate Laibman’s position in my previous article?; the logical priority of the production of surplusvalue over the distribution of surplus-value; different starting points: quantities of money capital (Marx) vs. quantities of physical inputs and outputs (Sraffa); is Marx’s theory “monetary”?; and is my interpretation of Marx’s theory logically incoherent?
There are two main points in my “macro-monetary” interpretation of Marx’s theory and the theory of prices of production in particular: 1. There are two main levels of abstraction in Marx’s theory—the production of surplus-value in Volumes 1 and 2 and the distribution of surplus-value in Volume 3
Summary
Fred Moseley is Emeritus Professor of Economics at Mount Holyoke College. He taught courses in Marxian Economics, History of Economic Thought, US Economic History, and Macroeconomics. He has published numerous articles on Marx’s logical method, especially with respect to the transformation problem, and his new book Money and Totality: A MacroMonetary Interpretation of Marx’s Logic in Capital and the End of the “Transformation Problem” was published in 2016.
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