rest of Kliman's response

Michael McIntyre mmcintyr at wppost.depaul.edu
Sat Feb 10 09:53:03 PST 2001


Here's the portion of Kliman's response that was truncated in my first attempt to send it to the list.

Michael McIntyre

(4) "I confess that I don't understand the last point of Kliman's

rebuttal. Perhaps somewhere in here I've smuggled in "the bizarre

premise that input and output

prices must be equal", but I honestly don't see where."

I wasn't charging you with that. I raised the issue for two

reasons. First, to explain (in response to your initial query)

how rejection of "equilibrium" is involved in the refutations of

the allegations that Marx's value theory is internally

inconsistent. Second, to indicate (in response to your statement

that "I won't say that the transformation problem can't be solved,

but as far as I know it hasn't been yet") that there exists no

problem that needs to be solved once one allows input and output

prices to differ.

(4) All of Michael's remaining points concern, in one way or

another, the claim that there is a "transformation problem"

because the cost price reckoned in terms of values differs from

the cost price reckoned in terms of prices (of production?).

(For instance, the notion that the denominator of Marx's profit

rate consists of "unobservable values" depends on this claim.)

The term "single-system" in the phrase "temporal single-system

interpretation" refers to the fact that we reject this claim.

Rather than there being two sets of cost prices and thus two

discordant systems of values and prices, there is one set of cost

prices and thus a single system of values and prices. (The value

of a sector's output equals the cost price plus surplus-value,

while its price of production equals the *same* cost price plus

average profit.)

Please keep in mind that in Marx's ow, original account of the

transformation, there was a single cost price and a single system

of values and prices. Bortkiewicz was the one who created the

dual system. He did so not because he misinterpreted Marx. He

was fully aware that Marx's account refers to a single set of cost

prices. Bortkiewicz created the dual system because he wrongly

thought he had proven that the single system led to a spurious

disruption of reproduction, stemming from inequality of input

prices, and therefore that he needed a dual system to *correct*

Marx's error.

The references I've cited above (and lots of others) discuss the

textual evidence for the single-system interpretation. But I

believe the single best piece of evidence that this interpretation

is correct is that Marx's own results can be derived on its basis,

whereas the dual-system interpretation leads to the negation of

these results.

A detailed discussion of the evidence is not something I have time

for now. So I'll just say a few words about the issue. It is

crucial to bear in mind the difference between the value of the

(constant and variable) *capital* that is advanced, and the value

of the *inputs* (means of production and labor-power) acquired

with those advances. For instance, precisely because prices

differ from values, a microchip might have a value of 200, but a

price of 150, and so the SUM OF VALUE advanced to acquire it

(i.e., the value of the investment) is 150, not 200. And it is

the value of capital advanced or invested, NOT the values of

inputs, with which Marx's account of the transformation begins

(see Ch. 9). (Thus the [single] cost price depends on the prices

of the inputs, not their values.)

Ironically, Marx said exactly as much in a passage usually cited

in order to try to prove that he was admitting that his account of

the transformation was in error. He wrote something like "if the

cost price of the commodity is equated with the VALU OF THE



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