Fred and Andrew seem to be at it again on the transformation
stuff. Witness the flurry of posts. Some observations.
1. I think we need to bear in mind that the capitalists of
today are not necessarily after higher profit rates but do seek
higher rates of return on their investments. Here I note
that Marx had the good sense not to publish his transformation
examples nor did he continue focusing on a simple rate of profit
after 1868. Indeed, all of his work on CAPITAL in the 1870's
was on Vol. II. This allowed him to consider and develop concepts
that did not require resolution of the issues surrounding
measures of profitability.
That said, a few comments concerning the recent posts.
2. I see no reason to assume that the unit prices paid for the investments
in Marx's transformation examples are equal to the unit prices
of commodities produced with those investments. Further, I find
no textual evidence that Marx made such an assumption.
3. Marx's examples are not part of some sort of reproduction schemes.
Indeed, Marx, in correspondence with Engles, notes that the commodities
produced by natural monopolies are not included in his transformation
examples. This would rule out any effort to place the transformation
procedure within the context of reproduction -- simple, expanded or
other.
4. Kliman and McClone's work on the transformation problem is in response
to those who use Marx's reproduction schemes to criticize his
transformation
procedure. Few relevant comments have been made concerning the success
or failure of
their efforts. Certainly, none in recent comments.
5. If we simply accept the idea that unit input and unit output prices are
equal in Marx's transformation procedure and that this means that
the inputs were produced using the same techniques as the outputs,
then we are forced to conclude that prices of production can only
exist when no technical change is taking place. Since technical
change is more or less an ongoing feature of capitalism, prices
of production can never exist.
John
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