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