Phenomenology, Scientific Method and the Transformation Problem

We argue in this article that Marx’s scientific method coupled with his analysis of the phenomenological consciousness of agents trapped within the capitalist mode of production provides a sufficient solution to the transformation problem. That is, Marx needs no amending – mathematical, philosophical, or otherwise – and the tools he uses to demonstrate and resolve the problem – science and phenomenology – were already clearly spelled out in his texts. Critics of Marx either fail to understand his scientific method, or are themselves trapped within a non-scientific capitalist phenomenology. Similarly, Marxists that mathematically resolve the transformation problem fail to realise that Marx’s scientific analysis alone demonstrates that a mathematical solution to the transformation problem is a misapprehension of the relation between Marx’s abstract theory and concrete phenomena. Consequently, we also criticise the monetary theorists who try to dismiss the problem as pointless by claiming that Marx was not a pre-monetary theorist.

The Logic of Capital

This book presents the main economic argument developed by Marx in the three volumes of Capital in a coherent and comprehensive manner. The first part presents the main economic argument contained in the Capital in a coherent and comprehensive manner. It also delves into three long-standing debates in Marxist political economy: the transformation problem, the Okishio theorem, and theories of exploitation and oppression. Starting with discussions of methodology, including dialectics and historical materialism, the book explains key concepts of Marxist political economy: commodity, value, money, capital, reserve army of labour, accumulation of capital, circuit of capital, reproduction schemas, prices of production, profit, interest and rent. Scholars of economics, sociology, geography, political science, anthropology, and other kindred disciplines, will find here an accessible yet rigorous treatment of Marxist political economy.

Chinese Studies on the Transformation Problem: A Selective Review

Marxian economists in China have put forward several interpretations of the transformation problem that differ from interpretations available in the English Marxian literature. These contributions remain unfamiliar to the English world due to language barriers. Thus, this paper provides a review of four representative Chinese contributions. JEL Classification: B51, C67, D46

A critique of Shaikh’s two interpretations of Marx’s ‘transformation problem’

It is argued in this paper that Shaikh has presented two different interpretations of the transformation problem in his works. In his influential 1977 paper, he presented an “iterative” interpretation in which there is a transfer of value between departments in the economy; and in a series of papers in the 1980s and in his recent book, he presented a different interpretation in which there is a transfer of value between firms in Department 3 and capitalist households. An important common feature of these two different interpretations is that total profit is not equal to total surplus-value. The two interpretations present different explanations of this divergence, which are examined in detail in this paper. It is argued that there is no textual evidence whatsoever to support Shaikh’s second interpretation. A few comparisons will also be made to my “macro-monetary” interpretation of Marx theory according to which there is no transformation problem in Marx’s theory and total profit is always equal to total surplus-value.

Marx’s Argument for the Labor Theory of Value

In a Times Literary Supplement review of some recent literature on Marx and Marxism for a general readership, Jonathan Wolff claimed that Marx’s solution to the so-called “transformation problem” is “half-baked.” The aim of this paper is to challenge this complacent dismissal of some of Marx’s central economic ideas. In the process, I want to show that although the issues here are subtle and complex, Marx’s ideas retain a great deal of intuitive appeal, and his “solution” to the so-called “transformation problem” is neither conceptually implausible nor mathematically dubious. Crucial to this aim is to show that Marx viewed the categories of (what he called bourgeois) economics through a social lens, which is given in the first chapter of the first volume of Capital.