Re: [OPE-L] why does the debate on the "transformation problem" continue?

From: Ian Wright (wrighti@ACM.ORG)
Date: Mon Mar 26 2007 - 16:12:47 EDT 

Sorry Allin I didn't get around to replying to you directly.

> Ian, could you explain why you think that is the case?

Simply that dropping the assumption of uniform profits, and replacing
with a distribution of profits, will not alter the usual criticisms:
that the standard labour-value rate of profit is not the price rate of
profit, and that standard labour-value is not conserved in price. (I
should mention that this is my intuition, I have not spent time to
prove this).

My guess is that, in theory, if a diagonal matrix of profit-rates were
to be negatively correlated with sectoral organic compositions then
the resulting prices will be positively correlated to standard
labour-values (direct prices). Perhaps the empirical results, which
show that market prices are somewhere inbetween proportionality to
direct prices and prices of production, indicate that the production
of new surplus-value disrupts the tendency to profit equalization. But
I do not see how such empirical results directly address the TP;
first, because they adopt the standard definition of labour-value,
which I question, and second, because the TP is a logical-conceptual
problem about conservation of labour-value in price under ideal
theoretical conditions.

Best,
-Ian.

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