Here Dickinson's article mentioned in 4423: A COMMENT ON MEEK'S 'NOTES ON THE TRANSFORMATION PROBLEM' I would like to suggest that, in their handling of the "transformation problem," Bortkiewicz, Sweezy, Winternitz, Meek and others are introducing unnecessary complications, due to their pursuing a will-o'-the wisp. Having obtained three equaitons with four unknowns (the second set of equations on p. 101 of Meek's article), they then look round for a fourth condition in order to make the problem determinate. But the problem *is* in the nature of reality, indeterminate. For x, y and z are not three different, independent variables. Only ther ratios are significant, and need to be determined. Values and prices are quantities of different dimensions, measures in different units. Values are measured in quantities of labour-time. Prices are measures in terms of money. In each of the three different departaments of produciton values are conveted into prices by means of a multiplier x, y or z. Each multiplier implies a factor relating labour-time to money. The absolute value of this factor is of no significance. It does notmatter whether an hour of labour-time corresponds to 1 franc, 10 francs of 100 francs. Only the *ratios* of x, y and z are relevant to the transformation problem. Given the ratios, the actual prices can be arrived at by the use of a *numeraire*, the magnitude of which in immaterial. Thus there are really only three unknowns, the rate of profit and the two ratios x:y:z. These can be determined from the three equations. No fourth condition is needed. The idea of equaiton the sum of prices (or of any prices) to the sum of values (or of any values) is nonsense. To equate a ratio of prices to a ratio of values might make sense." H.D. Dickinson, University of Bristol. -------------- Now, if one checks Tugan-Baranowksy 1905 original presentation, his "prices" are in money and his "values" in labor-time, exclusively. He doesn't refer, however, to "prices" as pertaining exclusively to Vol III and "values" to Vol I. Nor does this Dickinson himself. You write in 4430: >So I guess the "labor-value" interpretation of Volume 1 must have been >somehow "in the air" in the 1950s and starts to show up in the literature >with Dickenson and Seton. I wonder how it all started. And, even more >importantly, I wonder what textual evidence there is to support it, since >Marx is talking about money and prices and exchange from Chapter 1 on. I couldn't check it but it seems to me that the key author here is Meek, referred by Dickinson. Their reading is strongly linked with the idea the Marx's "first table" in III.9 is exclusively "about values" and the "second table" is exclusively "about prices". Magnitudes in "second table" are "derived" from the "first table". At the same time, it is interpreted that the "first table" corresponds to "Marx's analysis *in Volume 1*", which would deal exclusively with "values", interpreted only as value-substance, labor time. So there is a complete separation between "value substance" and "value form", a separation manifested in the 2 "tables" (or "systems") and even in the idea that "values" are *exclusively* labor magnitudes and prices are *exclusively* money magnitudes. Marx's idea that prices are only forms of VALUE is, at this point, lost. As Dickinson writes, each commodity would have a "multiplier" linking labor-time and money. The expression of labor time as money is not general. This strange theoretical construction "sounds good" because seems to express Marx's determination of value by labor-time and this is why it convinced many Marxists over many years. What is missing is that money prices themselves are only an objective expression of labor time and that labor time must be expressed as money, given the peculiar characteristic of the capitalism, i.e. the prevaling "private exchange". By dualistically severing this connection, the transformation procedure became the "transformation problem" with its two disconnected "worlds". This is, again, reminiscent of Platonic constructions in which there is a "hidden world" (the ideal *invisible* essence --"values") and an "external world" (visible but accidental "prices"). Besides this, it's lost the historic, *temporal* nature of the process Marx is describing (the determination of production prices by values), being replaced by the separated atemporal and metaphysical "equilibrium" constructions --the "systems" of "value" and "price". For all this, we should thank forever Herr Michael Tugan-Baranowsky, a declared Marx's enemy, and truly father of "Marxian Economics" and its nonsensical "riddles". Alejandro Ramos
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Nov 30 2000 - 00:00:04 EST