> > >Medio's presentation is perhaps the clearest expression of this >interpretation that "Volume 1 is about labor-values only". He explicitly >calls his system of equations (2) the "value system". The variables >determined in his "value system" are the labor-values of individual >commodities and the rate of surplus-value (as a ratio of >labor-values). Money and prices do not appear in the "value >system" equations at all. (Medio's article appears in Hunt and Schwartz >(eds.), A Critique of Economic Theory.) Fred, Yes, the "inputs" in the transformation tableaux are in money terms; they have money prices--that's why they are called the costPRICE--but the money prices which they have is determined on the assumption that means of production and wage goods sold at their value. They have the form of what Gouverneur calls direct prices. Marx does say unequivocally upon completion of his transformation tableau that the inputs could not have sold at prices which were determined on his own assumption that goods sold at value; rather they had to have been sold at prices of production. Now that he has derived the category he can say this. Marx unequivocally says that the cost prices therefore have to be modified in ch 9. I do not see why you deny this. Marx does not say that the inputs should be transformed into the same unit prices of production as the outputs via the use of simultaneous equations or an iterative method. But this is a different issue. It simply does not follow that since the inputs are in the price form (you are right) that they are in the form of prices of production (this does not follow). We do need to recognize the need to transform the inputs. We don't have to transform them into identical prices of production as the outputs. We can say that that no one period model will give us the data to determine the prices of production of the inputs. But we should not deny that Marx himself did say that unless the cost prices are modified by allowing for the inputs to have sold at prices of production, rather than prices determined on the assumption of sale at value, we can go wrong. We should also show that it is possible for the inputs to be transformed into the same form of prices of production as the outputs while the two equalities hold. That is, in a scheme in which both inputs and outputs do sell at prices of production,it should remain true that total value=total price and mass of surplus value=sum of profits. All the best, Rakesh
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