Marx's Transformation Research Articles

An empirically sufficient form for Sraffa prices

This paper examines three propositions: Sraffa's comment that Marx was “of course” right in thinking that labor value and “Sraffa price” (prices expressed relative to Sraffa's standard commodity) aggregates are essentially the same: empirical deviations of various aggregate components of total output are around five percent. This should be reflected in small representative models. Second, Pasinetti is correct that actual Sraffa price paths are generally simpler than those in the theoretical literature – as confirmed by the 403 industry price curves of the US 2002 input-output matrix. Third, as has been often demonstrated, Marx's transformation procedure is an iterative procedure for deriving Sraffa prices. Bienenfeld derives powerful first and second iterates, each beginning and ending at the corresponding individual Sraffa price curves. The simple nonlinear form of the second iterate provides excellent fits for the 403 Sraffa price curves. It is therefore an empirically sufficient general form of such price curves.

Dissolving the value-price transformation Rubik's cube: A response to Steve Toms’ review of Accounting for Value

Toms disputes the Temporal Single-System Interpretation's claim to have refuted Bortkiewicz’s influential charge that Marx's transformation from values to prices is ‘inconsistent’. This is a claim that Bryer supports with a replacement cost accounting interpretation, which Toms asserts leaves the ‘problem’ an ‘unsolved’ Rubik's cube. This conclusion is seriously misleading, the note argues, which illustrates the dangers from failing to always take the ‘social turn’ in accounting history research.

A Continuation of the Debate over Money and Totality

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.

A category-mistake in the classical labour theory of value

The classical labour theory of value generates two well-known contradictions: Ricardo's problem of an invariable measure of value and Marx's transformation problem. I show that both contradictions derive from a category-mistake of supposing that technical costs and total costs are of the same logical type. This category-mistake is the underlying cause of the almost two hundred year history of the 'value controversy'. Once identified we can avoid the mistake, which reveals a more general labour theory of value with an invariable measure of value and without a trans- formation problem.

The Transformation Problem: An Anti-Critique

This article takes up the neo-Ricardian challenge to locate the logical flaws in the various ‘correctives’ offered to Marx's transformation problem from the time of Böhm-Bawerk and Bortkiewicz to Sraffa. I propose to show that the technological concept of the ‘value’ suggested by volume I of Capital is extensively modified in volume III to explain the concept of ‘price’ and once that is adequately established, the transformation problem properly understood becomes an issue of ‘repricing’. Because repricing requires a change in the physical structure of production—of labour reallocation, the neo-Ricardian approach, which lacks any dynamic component, is inadequate to the task of explaining how the redistribution of surplus value takes place through the movement of capital. Moreover, the neo-Ricardian approach is shown to be inadequate both in establishing a uniform, average rate of profit and in establishing a unique average rate of profit. These conceptual flaws nullify the neo-Ricardian approach to the general question of price formation based on the labour theory of value because they break the conceptual linkages between labour-time, value, capital and money. Once these linkages are properly established, it can be shown that Marx's approach is internally consistent and empirically useable.

The transformation problem: Is the standard commodity a solution?

This paper attempts to closely investigate the relationship between Ricardo's search for an invariable measure of value and Sraffa's Standard commodity on the one hand and Marx's transformation problem and his notion of exploitation on the other. The paper argues that Marx's notion of exploitation is subtly different from the Sraffian notion of exploitation as suggested by Garegnani. And that the Standard commodity is not a solution to Marx's transformation problem as suggested by Eatwell. The paper is an attempt to initiate a fruitful dialog between Marxists and Sraffians on the question of labor as a unit of measure and its relation to the notion of exploitation.

The Transformation Problem: Is the Standard Commodity a Solution?

This paper attempts to closely investigate the relationship between Ricardo's search for an invariable measure of value and Sraffa's Standard commodity on the one hand and Marx's transformation problem and his notion of exploitation on the other. The paper argues that Marx's notion of exploitation is subtly different from the Sraffian notion of exploitation as suggested by Garegnani. And that the Standard commodity is not a solution to Marx's transformation problem as suggested by Eatwell. The paper is an attempt to initiate a fruitful dialog between Marxists and Sraffians on the question of labor as a unit of measure and its relation to the notion of exploitation.

An Alternative Reading of the Transformation of Values into Prices of Production

This article analyses the transformation of values into prices of production from the point of view of differences in the organic composition of capital. Marx's transformation has two stages. In the first, the value of the means of production used up is irrelevant; in the second, the economy is analysed at the level of price. The transformation helps to explain the distribution of labour and surplus value across the economy, and substantiates the claim that value is produced by labour alone. However, it does not allow the vector of prices of production to be calculated.

From Production Prices to Reproduction Prices

This article argues that Marx's transformation procedure has been turned into a nonexistent transformation ‘problem’ by abolishing time, i.e. by implicitly applying the methodology of neo-classical general equilibrium theory. It then depicts the real transformation process from individual into social values both when technological change is abstracted from and when it is explicitly taken into consideration. Finally the article ends with a critique of the thesis according to which value is created in the act of exchange.

Marx's transformation problem and Ricardo's invariant measure

Marx's transformation problem and Ricardo's invariant measure

The so-called “transformation problem” revisited: A comment

This comment shows that Lipietz's Marxist transformation theorem represents but a simple, though useful reinterpretation of obvious mathematical consequences of a standard Sraffa model—by making appropriate use of its known degree of freedom. Labor values are not involved in this new interpretation of conventional prices of production. A proposal is therefore made how their role in Marx's transformation may be investigated further on the basis of Lipietz's theorem and its interpretation of the “value of labor power”.

VALUE AND DISTRIBUTION IN THE CLASSICAL ECONOMISTS AND MARX 1

1. THE theory of value and distribution is at present in a situation of unease and uncertainty: we no longer find the same general agreement about its basic elements which obtained until a few decades ago. Two main theoretical developments have undermined the dominant theory which explained distribution and relative prices by means of the of the two opposing sets of forces, and for of The first development in order of time has been Keynes's refutation of the doctrine according to which a competitive economic system tends towards the full employment of labour, i.e. towards that equilibrium between demand and supply of labour, which was to determine the wage. Keynes' concentration on the short period, and the persistence in the General Theory of many traditional premises favoured the successive attempts to reconcile his results with orthodox long-period analysis: but the weakening of the dominant theory which nonetheless resulted from his work can be seen both in the uneasiness which, in ever-changing forms, characterizes the renewed orthodoxy, and in the tendency of Keynes' direct followers towards a more radical departure from traditional theory. The second development consists in the critique of the notion of as a factor of measurable independently of distribution.2 This critique has shown the invalidity of some propositions of the theory, like the inverse relation between the rate of interest (rate of profit) and the quantity of capital per worker, which are basic for the explanation of distribution in terms of and for factors of production. The uncertainty which has resulted from these developments finds its expression in authors who think that new theoretical approaches should be explored. It is also revealed by the nature of some of the work carried out by those who adhere to the traditional approach.3 1 This paper which develops under the impact of Sraff a's production of commodities by means of commodities some propositions contained in a Ph.D dissertation of 1955-1958, is based on notes delivered at a conference on Marx's Transformation of Values into Prices of Production held in Siena in 1972, and used then for lectures given in Cambridge and elsewhere since

The Normative and Positivistic Inferiority of Marx's Values Paradigm

Professor Nguyen [5] honors my 1971 postmortem on Marx's transformation problem, Samuelson [10], by auditing its logic and results. It is gratifying that Nguyen's procedures (1) will in general confirm Samuelson's result; (2) give, for values, the result found to be exactly that given in Samuelson's paper; (3) give, for prices, precisely that given in Samuelson's Table 3B; and (4) show that The conclusion reached by Professor Samuelson is ... demonstrated in a fairly straight-forward fashion.. . by a matrix characteristic-value formulation.