Controversy has prevailed since the problem of “transforming” values into prices first emerged in the late 19th century. Progress has, regrettably, been hampered by attempts to “vindicate” Marx’s work exactly, rather than treating him as a pioneer upon whom his successors must build, using the latest scientific methods. To make progress, the question must be faced squarely: what does the value dimension—assuming that we can define it and determine its properties with rigor and precision—actually do? How does a value-theoretic political economy provide superior insights into capitalist laws of motion, which could not be attained by critical study of the empirically received categories (prices, wages, profits, production) alone? Insights from Marx and Engels into the formation of a general balance of the opposing class forces of capitalist society may help us in our search for answers to these questions.
D. Laibman 1973–1974. “Values and Prices of Production: The Political Economy of the Transformation Problem.” Science & Society 37 (4): 404‒436.
D. Laibman 1984–1985. “Value: A Dialog in One Act.” Science & Society 48 (4): 449–465.
D. Laibman 2002. “Value and the Quest for the Core of Capitalism.” Review of Radical Political Economics 34 (2): 159‒178.
D. Laibman 2018. “Money and Totality: Another Round of Debate on Value Formation and Transformation.” World Review of Political Economy 9 (1): 21‒40.
D. Laibman 2021. “The Theory of Value: Some Notes in Search of a Breakthrough” (Editorial Perspectives). Science & Society 85 (2): 155–161.
F. Moseley 2016. Money and Totality: A Macro-Monetary Interpretation of Marx’s Logic in Capital and the End of the “Transformation Problem.” Boston: Brill.
F. Moseley 2018. “Which Way Forward: Marx’s Theory or Sraffa’s Theory?—A Reply to Laibman.” World Review of Political Economy 9 (2): 148–163.
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P. Sraffa 1960. Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.