Allin, Just to clarify what I was saying in the previous message. 1. I am constraining the transforming of the inputs so that their total prices of production remain determined by the total value of those inputs as given in the first two tableaux. 2.I then assume that this period achieved a productivity increase from last period. I assumed 5%, 3% would have made the interperiodic change in unit prices even less. 3. Finally I show that unit prices would have changed in small and reasonable ways if we accept Marx's constraint. That is, I showed that unit prices of the outputs at t+1 would differ from from the unit prices of the inputs at t in a constrained manner wholly consistent with reality. 4. I again declared that disallowing Marx from introducing time subscripts which are already implicit in Capital 3,ch9 to his transformation procedure is an unreasonable manuver; moreover, no other theory than a revolutionary critique of bourgeois society would be so easily ditched when all that is needed is an saving assumption which is realistic. 5. I do not claim to have *determined* the unit input prices. I only show that there is a range within which they could have easily fallen which differs only slightly and reasonably from the output unit prices while maintaining the equality between the prices of production for the inputs and the value of those inputs as given in the the first two tableaux. 6. Your iteration breaks that the equality between the sum of the prices of production of the inputs and the value of those inputs. I argued that this equality has to be maintained; you cut me off in mid paragraph when I was laying out that constraint. 7. I argue that there is nothing unreasonable in maintaining that equality because it only requires small and reasonable interperiodic changes in the unit prices. 7. If said equality is maintained--and there is nothing unreasonable in such a constraint--then total cost price as it appears in the original tableau cannot be changed by the transforming of the inputs; if total cost price remains the same, then the 2nd tableau proves entirely adequate for Marx's purposes: it demonstrates the two equalities, the value theoretic determination of r, and the resolution of the contradiction between the principle of the average rate of profit and the law of value. The problem which Marx set himself is solved. 8. None of this proves that law of value actually does govern bourgeois society in the way marx has laid out, i.e., in terms of the determination of the general rate of profit. It only shows that it is a perfectly logical hypothesis which should be allowed to compete with rivals in its ability to explain the developmental dynamics of capital. Yours, Rakesh
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