There are a lot of charges of who is not responding to whom. I continue to disagree with Fred and Alejandro about whether the inputs are "untransformed" after the completion of the second tableau (I think the problem of transforming the inputs can only be and is indeed raised then because only at this point do we have the concept of prices of production at which the "inputs" would presumably have bought) and about what determines the value transferred from the means of prodution (to me it seems clear that it is the value of the means of production --not the money sum paid for them--that determines the value transferred). As for the controversy about m: It is Duncan who introduces the labor value theoretic concept of the monetary expression of value and its inverse of the value of money. And he does tell us how to calculate both from (reworked) GDP data, right? In his hypothetical example the former is $15 and the latter 4 minutes. Now one could of course argue that such calculation does not prove that abstract (productive) labor in one hour actually produces the $15 of value (one does not need such a labor theory of value to argue against the injustice of profit income or the human unfreedom implicit in private ownership of the means of production, Ajit and Gil both seem to be saying as they reduce Marx's basic critique of political economy and theory of surplus value to ethics). For Duncan's implication to hold, however, the labor theory of value would at the least have to be free of internal contradiction. Moreover, Ajit, as I understand you, you are arguing that in his transformation tableaux Marx has no way to convert total value to a dollar price quantity so that total cost price (also a dollar price quantity) can be subtracted from it to arrive at total profit which if then divided by total cost price would yield r or the mark up. Yet if profit is to explained on the basis of the law of value, the monetary expression of value has to be taken as given and fixed in order to rule out the possibility of profit via simple money inflation. I understand Paul B to have agreed with Fred on this, and have not understood your reply. Marx can fix the monetary expression of value at .5 shillings per abstract labor hour (value of one shilling as two hours) or anything else as long as he sticks with it throughout his presentation. Only this way can he explain the formation of the general industrial rate of profit on the basis of the law of value alone. Again if Marx had been trying to arrive at the correct relative prices, he would need to know the exact monetary expression of value and determine it from within the transformation tableau, but he's trying to resolve the contradiction between the average rate of profit and the law of value, to show how the former not only does not modify or contradict the former but can be fully explained on the basis of the latter. For this purpose, it is perfectly reasonable and necessary to take the monetary expression of value as fixed and given, perhaps much like the neo Ricardians,as Meek explains, have to take the scale of production and technical as invariant in order to carry out the investigation of specific problems. All the best, Rakesh
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