A reply to Jerry's ope-l 5195.
He wrote: "*If* Bronfrenbrenner's 'solution' to the transformation 'turned
out to be an exact replica of Marx's own procedure' which disproved
allegations re 'Marx's internal inconsistency' ... *and*,
since you claim elsewhere (and repatedly) that TSS is the only solution
which establishes the above ... *then*,
doesn't it follow that you are claiming that Bronfrenbrenner's solution
was a a pre-TSS version of TSS [??? !!!]"
I have never called TSS a "solution."
I have especially never called it a "solution" to the transformation
"problem."
It is an *interpretation* of Marx's value theory.
Note: "of Marx's value theory," rather than "of the value/production price
transformation."
The scope of this interpretation extends far beyond the relation of values and
production prices.
I think that future generations will rather remember us primarily for having
refuted the Okishio theorem, for having worked out a way of understanding
_Capital_ that simply dissolves the supposedly insuperable technical problems
that previous researchers spent their time on, and especially for having
permitted a direct return to Marx's critique of political economy instead of a
return mediated by "Marxian economics."
I maintain that the TSS interpretation is the sole extant interpretation that
is able to make sense of the "quantitative" dimension of Marx's value theory
as a whole, by refuting all the charges of internal inconsistency that have
been made with respect to it.
I do not maintain -- and I have NEVER, EVER, maintained, much less
"repeatedly" -- that only the TSS interpretation is able to remove the false
appearance of internal inconsistency from the Vol. III, Ch. 9 transformation.
You may remember that, at the EEA a couple of months ago, Alan Freeman noted
that the simultaneous single-system interpretation"get[s] Marx right enough"
to remove the false appearance of internal inconsistency from the Vol. III,
Ch. 9 transformation.
He is right about that.
In general, the SSS interpretation is able to replicate the equalities and
inequalities of Marx's value theory, but it fails to replicate a lot of
propositions that involve relations of determination.
For more on this, please study OPE-L 3012.
Bronfenbrenner developed an algebraic formula that computes equal-profit-rate
prices, given value magnitudes.
For any given set of values, it generates the prices that Marx would generate.
The irony is that he seems not to have been aware of that.
That Bronfenbrenner, seemingly unwittingly, stumbled upon Marx's own
resolution of the issue does not mean that he (Bronfenbrenner) had an
*interpretation* of Marx's value theory adequate to the formula.
Much less does it mean that he had an interpretation of Marx's value theory
that was able to make sense of it as a whole, and to remove the false
appearance of internal inconsistency from it.
Got it?
Andrew Kliman