In reply to OPE-L 4430, Fred wrote : 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. What was in the air was Leontief, and Samuelson-Dorfman-Solow-Chenery. "Marx" was undoubtedly read through them, to "modernize" him. On the other matter. It is clear that folks before Abrahan-Frois and Berrebi claimed that values are vertically integrated labor coefficients. What I'm not sure about is who was first to claim that (a) values in *Marx's own* work are exclusively vertically integrated labor coefficients (that have no expression as monetary values that differ from monetary prices) and (b) the "transformation problem" concerns the relationship between monetary and labor-time variables -- i.e., units of measurement rather than (or in addition to) discrepancies between aggregate magnitudes. I think A-F and B may have been the first to assert (b). But it is many years since I read them, and I'm no longer certain that they do assert it. Others have. Let me also ask folks a question. Do you think these misinterpretations have been innocent -- misreadings of what the texts say? Or do you think there have been ulterior motives at work -- attempts to "modernize" Marx, to turn him into an economist, a precursor of Walras or "Sraffa" (read Garegnani)? Andrew Kliman
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