The Robin/Beckert debate on the “transition” to capitalism

 

Robin and Beckert (wink, wink)

I haven’t finished Sven Beckert's Capitalism: A Global History yet (long semester and still grading), so my thoughts on this are still unfinished. Corey Robin, in his review for The Nation, argues that while the book is an ambitious and impressively researched work, it is ultimately hobbled by deep conceptual confusion and internal contradictions.

Beckert's central thesis is that capitalism "was born global," and he traces its origins back to long-distance merchants in the 12th century. Robin systematically dismantles this starting point, asserting that neither the principle of accumulating capital nor the existence of long-distance trade was new at that time. He argues that Beckert's own evidence repeatedly points away from trade and toward an alternative conclusion. In his view, capitalism's true "foundry" was the alliance between the modern state and capital owners who seized direct control of production, most importantly by transforming the nature of labor exploitation.

Robin also contends that the book's key analytical distinctions collapse under the weight of its own historical detail. Beckert posits a shift from an early, violent "war capitalism" to a more modern "industrial capitalism" defined by wage labor. Yet, as Robin highlights, Beckert's narrative is filled with evidence of persistent and expanding slavery, state coercion, and violent conquest well into the 19th and 20th centuries, making the supposed "radical departure" between the two eras blurry at best.

Ultimately, Robin frames the book's failures as symptomatic of a larger problem facing the "new history of capitalism." In an era where capitalism appears to be a total, all-encompassing global system with no viable alternative, it has lost its historical specificity. Unlike earlier historians who provided a clear analytical definition of capitalism, Beckert's book would be representative of a school that does not use theory, and celebrates it. This is perhaps the most relevant point raised by Robin. He notes that the: "greats of history and theory—Smith, Braudel, Marx, and Weber—are claimed as inspirations, without their presence materializing on the page" and that for the New History of Capitalism School the lack of definition of capitalism is “a virtue … not a vice.” As a result, the analysis of capitalism becomes a-historical, leading to the analytical confusion at the heart of an ambitious, but ultimately flawed book.

The intellectual lineage of the conflict between Corey Robin and Sven Beckert's views, as framed in the former’s review, is to a very large extent a modern reframing of the classic Dobb/Sweezy transition debate of the 1950s (incidentally I used to teach a course, a long time ago, in a far away land that discussed this topic). Beckert occupies the Sweezy position, emphasizing the role of long distance trade, global networks, and circulation. Robin takes on the Dobb role, arguing that the real change is in the social relations of production, specifically the control and organization of labor.

Sweezy argued that feudalism was a stable system that was dismantled by an external force, namely, the growth of long-distance trade and the revival of monetary relations. Beckert makes a strikingly similar argument on a grander scale. His thesis that capitalism "was born global" and originated with 12th century merchants places the engine of change in the act of connecting distant places through trade. Arguably, for both, capitalism comes from the outside, from the networks of exchange that break down older, more localized systems.

Dobb, the orthodox Marxist/Cambridge don, countered that feudalism collapsed due to its own internal contradictions, specifically the class struggle between lords and peasants. This internal breakdown created the necessary conditions for capitalism. In particular, it created a class of dispossessed peasants who had to sell their labor to survive (there are many posts on the topic in this blog; see this one). Robin mirrors this argument in the review. He dismisses Beckert's focus on merchants and argues that: "[c]ontrary to what Beckert sometimes says, his book shows that capitalism does not begin with trade and long-distance connection. It does not arise from merchants behaving like merchants. It does not follow from accumulation of wealth. It begins with capital’s taking control of production and unlocking workers’ highly prized and protected capacity for labor." For Dobb/Robin, the key is not trade, but the fundamental reorganization of how things are made and by whom.

Because Sweezy/Beckert see trade as the driver, their origin story is necessarily diffuse and network-based, not located in one specific place. Beckert explicitly argues against seeing capitalism's origins in "one place" (i.e., England), favoring "the connections between various places." Dobb located the transition specifically in the English countryside, where the transformation of agricultural labor first occurred. Robin, while acknowledging the global scale, repeatedly points to the specific sites where labor was reorganized for production, be it the English countryside or, crucially, the slave plantations of Cape Verde and the Americas, as the places where the "radical innovation" happened.

While the core logic is the same, the Robin/Beckert debate is not a simple repetition of the Dobb/Sweezy one. It's updated for the 21st century in three crucial ways, the centrality of slavery, the role of the state, and the collapse of Soviet socialism.

The original Dobb/Sweezy debate was largely Eurocentric and focused on the transition from feudalism to wage labor. The "New History of Capitalism," which Beckert represents, places chattel slavery and what Beckert calls "war capitalism" at the absolute center of the story. Robin's critique is not just a call to look at wage labor in England (the classic Dobb argument; I used to teach the old debate in a somewhat Dobbious way; see what I did there?). Instead, he uses the Dobbist (is this better?) logic to argue that the slave plantation was a key site of capitalist innovation in production, a brutal factory in the field where new forms of labor control were pioneered. This moves the focus from a binary of feudalism/wage-labor to a more complex reality where coerced and unfree labor were foundational to industrial capitalism. I should note that this reminds me of the Latin American debate between those that thought that there was a feudal like past, and those (e.g. Bagú, Caio Prado) that argued that we entered the world in the mercantile phase of capitalism, fully as part of that global (world) system.

Robin gives the state a much more prominent role than Dobb did. He highlights Max Weber's concept of "political capitalism", the "memorable alliance between the rising states" and capitalists., citing the more recent work by Branko Milanovic. For Robin, the state's military power, its ability to grant monopolies, and its violent suppression of populations were not just helpful but essential to capital's seizure of production. In this respect, I think the work by Priya Satia should had been referenced in this context. As she argues: "state institutions drove Britain’s industrial revolution in crucial ways ... war made the industrial revolution."

This is Robin's final, and harshest criticism. Dobb and Sweezy were arguing in the shadow of the Cold War, a time when socialism appeared as a real historical alternative. Capitalism was understood by both as a specific historical system with a beginning and a potential end. Robin argues that Beckert is writing in an era of capitalist triumphalism, where it seems absolute and eternal. This, Robin suggests, is why Beckert's analysis becomes a blurry, unending story of "the great connecting." Without the political horizon of an alternative, capitalism loses its sharp historical edges and becomes a "Once upon a time..." setting rather than a system to be explained.

I should say that this is not my perception of the book so far. Robin seems to create a false dichotomy. He seems to be arguing that because Beckert emphasizes exchange (the Sweezy position), he inherently cannot properly center the violent relations of production (slavery, state coercion). That is certainly not the case. In Slavery's Capitalism, Beckert's deals the centrality of the peculiar institution for the rise of capitalism in the US. Also, as with the Dobb/Sweezy debate, it is possible that Beckert isn't choosing exchange over production, but noting that global mercantile connections were central in the process that changed relations of production. Beckert might be arguing that the imperative of building a global network of exchange was the primary driver that necessitated and shaped the specific forms of violent production seen in slavery and colonialism.

I'm also not sure that I would read Beckert as accepting a triumphalist view of the global market exchange system, if that is the implication. He is clearly a critic of how a global system of exchange was built on the foundations of slavery and state violence. The disagreement is ultimately about the analytical starting point, class struggle in the fields (Robin/Dobb) or the global network connecting those fields to the factories and markets of the world (Beckert/Sweezy).

On the origins of Sraffa's equations

Giancarlo de Vivo suggests that the Sraffian equations come from Marx's schemes of reproduction, and that the inspiration was in a footnote from the editor, Karl Kautsky, in the Theories of Suplus Value. Here a letter from Maurice Dobb and Piero Sraffa to Kautsky, from 1929, asking to use his edition as the basis for an English translation (originals in Kautsky's archives):

De Vivo's views are discussed in a book edited by Massimo Pivetti, which is certainly worth reading (I have the Spanish edition). I never thought of this genealogy of the Sraffian price equations as being controversial, but I have been re-reading some discussion about Sraffa's contributions between Pierangelo Garegnani and Marxist authors (from the 1970s) as a result of the events related to the latter's ten year death anniversary, and it did strike to me that it is unclear to most Marxists how closely related the prices of in the Production of Commodities are with Marx's work.

What makes capitalism capitalism?

So I had a debate (the sort of debate you can have with 140 characters) in Twitter a few days ago with Unlearning Economics and Jonathan Finegold, among others (links are to blogs not to the twitt feeds). The main question was the definition of capitalism. It is a peculiar feature of modern economics that very few mainstream authors would actually discuss the issue directly, even if there has been a revival of some related issues associated to the relevance of institutions (vis-à-vis geography and culture) in the rise of the West. Robert Heilbronner used to say that the best kept secret in economics is that it was is about the study of capitalism.

I'm not going to get too much into the topic here, but it is worth a brief summary. As discussed before (here) in the blog, the surplus approach suggests that economics is the study of the material reproduction of societies. The existence of a surplus allows for specialization and progress, and the ways in which the surplus is produced and distributed is central for the understanding of reproduction. Broadly speaking, what Marx referred to as a mode of production is comprised of two elements, the material conditions of production or the forces of production, which include the means of production that incorporate a certain technology, and the social relations of production, which include the organization of production and the customs, laws and rules that guarantee the property of the means of production.

For Marx the manifestation of the capitalistic character of the manufacturing process is that the workers do not own the means of production and must sell their labor power. The reason being that an essential condition for capitalists to be able to buy labor power is that workers do not own means of production and are forced to sell in the market their labor force (see Capital, Volume I, Part II, chapter 6). The essence of the capitalist system is that workers sell their labor force, and are in this particular way exploited. That's the specific way in which capitalists obtain a surplus beyond what is necessary for social reproduction.

On the notion of the mode of production Marx perceptively tells us (Vol. I, Book I, Part I, ch. 1) that:

"The mode of production in which the product takes the form of a commodity, or is produced directly for exchange, is the most general and most embryonic form of bourgeois production. It therefore makes its appearance at an early date in history, though not in the same predominating and characteristic manner as now-a-days. 

Even Adam Smith and Ricardo, the best representatives of the school, ... treat this mode of production as one eternally fixed by Nature for every state of society ..."

That's exactly what Max Weber (and many modern authors too, by the way) does. He often refers to capitalism when discussing the middle ages in Western Europe, or ancient China, or the Roman Empire (see for example his General Economic History). This naturalization of capitalism is also typical of mainstream authors, that tend to confuse the existence of markets, or the profit motive, with capitalism.

Production for exchange in the market existed for sure before modern times, and so did exploitation. But the difference with previous modes of production is not simply the more developed material conditions of production associated with the factory system and machinery. It is the specific social arrangement that allows capitalists to control the means of production and extract a surplus from workers that must sell labor power in the market, and are liable of being exploited (more or less according to their bargaining power) that sets capitalism apart. So it is the way in which labor is exploited, one in which workers sell labor power in the market, that makes capitalism capitalism, so to speak [this has interesting implications in the Dobb and Sweezy debates on the transition from feudalism to capitalism, for example, that I'll leave for another post].

Note that while this definition of capitalism is clearly Marxist it builds up on the surplus approach, and is one of (not the only one either) the main contributions of Marx to the surplus tradition (he was critical of the bourgeois elements of classical economics, but built on the analytical structure of the school). In fact, Turgot and Smith both describe the evolution of societies in terms of stages related to the mode of production. It is the economic character of production that governs other aspects of social relations. The four stages were hunting, pasturage, agriculture and commerce. Bill McColloch suggests (see here) quite convincingly that Marx builds on the work of Steaurt.

Also, note that the notion that the profit motive is the differentia specifica of capitalism is tied to the typical methodological individualistic stance of the mainstream. It is hard to say, however, that individuals (merchants, for example) in previous modes of production (say in the ancient mode of production, which was based on slavery) had no desire for profits. If they did, however, what's different about capitalism? That's also why all the alternative theories of history (to the surplus approach) tend to fetichize the role of the entrepreneur (see Landes's last book for the epitome of that approach, which was also displayed in the History Channel's The Men Who Built America). It's the return of Carlyle's hero-worship and the Great Men theory of history.

The last Marxist? Or shortchanging Hobsbawm

(1917-2012)

According to The Economist, Eric Hobsbawm, who has just died on October 1st, was the last of the Mohicans, I mean Marxists. Its news to me. In my view, the surplus approach which was brought back by Sraffa and builds on Marx is the ONLY coherent economic theory left standing. Marginalism (i.e. neoclassical economics) is nothing but a profession of faith, after the capital debates.

Among other things, because there is a role for historical and institutional analysis in the surplus approach, related to both the theories of distribution and accumulation, the work of Hobsbawm and other surplus approach historians is essential. The obituary was very thin on his contributions to our understanding about key issues in capitalist development.

The review of his contributions in The Economist's obituary was typical of what was written in the press (see also here; the exception here). A lot about his life, and range (yes I know he liked jazz, who doesn't?!), but his research was not quoted at all. Comments on his books were almost always restricted to the surveys on economic growth since the Revolutions, the so-called Age of Trilogy.

According to The Economist:

"That Marxist tag threatened to tarnish his reputation, when his lucid and scholarly books on what he called the long 19th century, from 1789 to 1914 (“The Age of Revolution”, “The Age of Capital”, “The Age of Empire”), on nationalism and on labour movements deserved, and won, an audience well beyond leftist circles and academe.

Defiant, Mr Hobsbawm championed Marx to the last. For his intellectual force; for his grasp of the world as a whole, at once political, economic, scientific and philosophical; and not least for his conviction, as relevant in 2008 as in 1848, that the capitalist system, with its yawning inequalities and naked greed, would inevitably—irresistibly—necessarily—be destroyed by its own internal tensions, and would be superseded by something better."

Marxism not only is not relevant, but it almost tarnished his reputation. There is no mention of what was, in my view at least, his major book, namely: Industry and Empire. His book is part of the tradition that suggests that the Industrial Revolution (IR) was demand driven, not supply constrained (like David Landes used to believe in the 1960s, in his Prometheus Unbound). Further, he argued that external demand (as Phyllis Deane) was crucial, and he insisted that without colonial markets, particularly in India (i.e. without Empire) there would be no Industrial Revolution. Imperialism and the search for global hegemony are joined at the hip with the development of Capitalism.

Also, there is nothing about his views on the standard of living debate during the Industrial Revolution.  To modern economic historians like Jeff Williamson and Peter Temin (subscription required) the IR had a positive impact on the living standars of the working class. Hobsbawm, like other Marxist historians, e.g. E.P.  Thompson, was on the pessimist side of the debate. For a modern pessimistic view see Charles Feinstein (subscription required too).

Hobsbawm was not just a popularizer of history, he was central for important debates in the Marxist tradition, which should be central for understanding of modern capitalism. Hobsbawm's theoretical underpinnings of his views of capitalist development, by emphasizing demand, are in the tradition of what we refer in this blog as classical-Keynesianism. Marx's views on distribution as conflictive, which are part of the broader surplus approach tradition, are essential for Hobsbawm contributions to economic history, and show why Marx is still relevant and required reading for anybody that wants to understand capitalism (i.e. the world we live in).

PS: Other central Marxists contributions to historical analysis are associated to the transition to capitalism, and Dobb and Sweezy are still required readings. Note that Marxists suggest that the origins of capitalism are associated to institutional changes in the productive structure (which might be pushed by expanding demand), and not as a result of cultural or geographical matters.

Eugene Genovese and modes of production

Eugene Genovese has passed away. He was a historian of American slavery, and his views were not particularly popular or discussed in economics courses, as far as I know. Mainstream, quantitative historians suggested that his view that slavery in the South was not profitable was incorrect (in particular Engerman and Fogel, the latter a Bank of Sweden prize, also known as the Nobel, winner). The other reason, I imagine, that made his work particularly difficult for mainstream authors was his use of Marxist categories, including one that I still find essential for historical analysis, namely: the notion of mode of production.

Genevose (I read only his The Political Economy of Slavery and not the classic Roll, Jordan, Roll, often praised as his best work) argued that slavery was an economic drag to the Master class, and that the system remained a pre-capitalist formation, with the profit motive having a secondary role in the process of social reproduction. The idea was that, even if the South was connected by trade (cotton mostly) with the capitalist production in England (and New England too), the commercial relations where not central for the relations of production in the plantation system [I find his argument very unconvincing, by the way].

In other words, very much like Dobb, in the Transition debate with Sweezy, Genovese argued that the trade link was not central and could not define the South as part of the capitalist mode of production. In this sense, Southern slavery was for him a distinctive mode of production, one that was seen increasingly from a positive angle by Genovese, as he became more conservative and remained, interestingly, critical of the capitalist mode of production (which in a sense makes him more in tune with old conservatives that also repudiated the mercantilization of social relations).

Note that Genovese, like Engerman and Fogel in this case, thought that the peculiar institution was quite more benign that it is usually thought. In this sense, he reminds me of the quintessential Brazilian analysis of slavery in The Masters and the Slaves, by Gilberto Freyre, who also, even if for different theoretical reasons, saw Brazilian (not Southern, even if he saw similarities) slavery as benign and helped create the myth of Brazil as a racial democracy.

PS: On the slavery debates Nate Cline suggests this paper by Wallerstein (subscription required).

Sraffa and Marxism or the Labor Theory of Value, what is it good for?

An old, but not completely closed, debate revolves around whether Sraffa was a Marxist or instead he should be seen as Ricardian, hence the term Neo-Ricardian used derisively by Bob Rowthorn (subscription required) and other Marxists authors (and also by Frank Hahn, again subscription required). From a personal point of view there is little doubt that Sraffa identified with Marxism, and close friends like Antonio Gramsci and Maurice Dobb would agree. But the important question is whether his contributions in Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities (PCMC) should be seen as a development or a criticism of Marx's theoretical tradition.

For the most part the question revolves around the relation between Sraffa's prices and the labor theory of value. Several authors tend to believe that the latter theory is central for Marx's theory of exploitation. Recent interpretations such as the so-called New Interpretation (NI) and the Temporal Single System (TSS) would agree on that point.

For example, Foley and Duménil (2008; subscription required) argue that:

"Central to Marx's framework of analysis in Capital is the labour theory of value (LTV), which defines the value of a commodity as the ‘socially necessary’ labour time required by its production, that is, the labour time required by average available techniques of production for workers of average skill. 

The LTV is central to Marx's theory of exploitation, a term he uses to describe a situation in which one individual or group lives on the product of the labour of others."

On the similar claims by the TSS Marxism see Mongiovi (2002; subscription required). [Vienneau provides a list of readings on the TSS topic here.]

The question then is what was the role of the labor theory of value in Marx and the classical authors, i.e. for the surplus approach. The initial problem that Smith was trying to deal with the LTV was to determine the rate of profits independently of prices, since profits were considered essential for capital accumulation. Note that one needs the prices to determine profits, in particular the price of the means of production advanced for production, but one needs the rate of profit (the normal uniform rate of profit) to determine long term normal (or production) prices.

Smith (1776, book I, chapter 6) makes the value of commodities depend on the quantity of labor required to produce them is where there has been no accumulation of capital or land. In his words:

"In that early and rude state of society which precedes both the accumulation of stock and the appropriation of land, the proportion between the quantities of labour necessary for acquiring different objects seems to be the only circumstance which can afford any rule for exchanging them for one another."

But when profit and rent make their appearance alongside the worker's income, the rule is no longer applicable. The price of a commodity is then obtained by 'adding up' its component parts, namely: wage, profit and rent. The adding up theory implied that profits and wages had an independent determination. Hence, if profits went up, and prices too, real wages might not decrease. As a result, one cannot determine profits independently of prices.

Ricardo saw the limitations of the adding up theory. In his early writings he solved the problem by presuming that the economy produced corn (grain) with corn and labor, and the surplus was a physical amount of corn, so the rate of profit could be measured as ratio of corn (the surplus) to corn (the means of production advanced for production). He, then used, the labor theory of value as an approximation to the solution in his Principles, knowing that prices were not exactly proportional to the amounts of labor directly and indirectly used in production.

That was, also, essentially the role of the LTV in Marx's volume I of his masterpiece Capital. That is, the LTV allows Marx to determine the rate of profit independently of prices. Note that Marx was also aware that relative prices determined by the amounts of labor directly and indirectly incorporated are incorrect once you have produced means of production. However, Marx thought that embodied labor redistributed by the process of competition meant that in the aggregate total surplus value  corresponded to total profits, even if prices of production deviated from embodied labor. As a result, on the basis of the LTV it was still possible to obtain the correct rate of profit. As it turns out, there is no reason for positive and negative deviations of prices of production from the labor values to cancel out. You cannot argue with the algebra.

Marx had no way of knowing this. Only with Bortkiewicz, Dimitriev and Tugan-Baranovsky's work, early in the 20th century, this was clearly understood. If in general commodities do not exchange at labor values, then there is no reason why that should be correct for two composite commodities that make the total physical surplus and the physical advanced means of production.

Sraffa's solution, based on the standard commodity (to be discussed in another post), shares with Ricardo's corn model the idea that one can measure the rate of profit as a share of a particular commodity (Sraffa's being a composite commodity, that is, composed of several goods). It also shares with Ricardo the fact that only basics (commodities that enter the production of all goods including their own production), which for simplicity can be related to subsistence goods, affect the rate of profit, while non-basics, or luxury goods, are not relevant. Further, as noted by Sraffa too, his solution resembles Smith's since the standard commodity can be seen as akin to the former's idea of labor commanded, that is relative prices are proportional to the amount of labor that they can command (buy). In that sense, Sraffa's prices are firmly based on a certain notion of the labor theory of value.

Mind you, in the central issues Marx's theory was correct. Once you determined exogenously the real wage, and the technical coefficients of production are given, one can determine the rate of profit, and it is inversely related, everything else constant, with the real wage. Hence, the theory of distribution based on class conflict which is the central element of the surplus approach, including Marx, is logically consistent [which is more that can be said about marginalism, as showed by the capital debates].

But does the Sraffian system mean that exploitation as interpreted by Marx is not valid anymore, since, as noted above, some Marxist authors think that the LTV (narrowly interpreted as prices of production proportional to embodied labor) is essential for that part of the Marxian project? Petri (2012)* has published an excellent review of the limitations of the NI and TSS. He clearly states (p. 3) that:

"The proof that labour is exploited, in particular, does not lie in the validity of a quantitative correspondence of surplus exchange value with surplus labour time; this is a misconception that derives from a mistaken acceptance of the argument that the inability to prove such a correspondence might mean that the capitalists contribute to production, that profits reflect their contribution, and that this is the reason why commodities do not exchange in proportion to labours embodied – the argument of the ‘vulgar’ economists and then of the marginalist critics of Marx" (emphasis added).

Why is that the case that there is no correspondence between the LTV and whether labor is exploited or not? Note that for Marxists this is a necessary condition because workers work more time than what is needed for their reproduction, and that is the supposed basis for exploitation. It is worth quoting Petri at length here:

"Imagine an isolated market economy where production is carried out by self-employed artisans and cooperatives, and the rate of profit is zero: prices of production are proportional to labours embodied. One day Gengis Khan’s army invades this community, but instead of killing everybody Gengis Khan announces that he will be content with collecting a yearly monetary tax at a rate r=20% on the value of the capital employed in each productive activity, a tax he will then use to buy goods on the market. The community is obliged to accept, and prices of production come to include a 20% tax on the value of capital which has the same effect on relative prices, and on real wages, as a 20% rate of profit. Relative prices are no longer proportional to labours embodied, Marx’s r=S/(C+V) does not work, but production is still performed by the same labourers, and the goods appropriated each year by Gengis Khan with the income deriving from the tax do not reflect any productive contribution of the oppressors. One would have little hesitation, it would seem, to say that Gengis Khan is exploiting this community. But if Gengis Khan had imposed the tax as a given percentage of wages, with the rate of profit remaining zero, then relative prices would have remained proportional to labours embodied, but exploitation would be still there. On the other hand, imagine that the 20% tax rate on the value of capital is imposed not by Gengis Khan but by unanimous popular vote because it is decided to use it to help for some years another community struck by an earthquake: in this case the surplus product would again be associated with an impossibility to explain prices with the labour theory of value, but few would call the surplus product the fruit of labour exploitation. All this shows that the proportionality or non-proportionality between exchange values and labours embodied reflects, not the absence or presence of other productive contributions besides that of labour, but only the specific way the mode of appropriation of the surplus product affects relative prices; the origin of the surplus remains to be ascertained" (emphasis added).

Hence, as the simple example shows one might have exploitation without the LTV, and no exploitation with the LTV, which should be a black swan for those that think that Marxism stands or falls with the narrow definition of the LTV. For our purposes what matters is that the correct solution of the problem of the determination of the rate of profit independently of prices, provided by Sraffa, actually strengthens and is a development of the theories of Marx and the other authors of the surplus approach. Sraffa is the author that makes Marx's conclusions possible.**

Notes:

* Petri provides a critique of NI and TSS solutions of the transformation problem too. A different solution, that is more Ricardian in assuming that embodied labor provides a good empirical approximation to production prices, is provided by Shaikh (1977).

** Interestingly Petri quotes several passages in which Foley tends to suggest that Marxism and marginalism are not necessarily incompatible.

References:

Foley, Duncan and Gérard Duménil (2008). "Marxian transformation problem." The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Second Edition. Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume. (eds.), The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan.

Mongiovi, Gary (2002). "Vulgar Economy in Marxian Garb: A Critique of Temporal Single-System Marxism," Review of Radical Political Economics, 34(4), pp. 393-416.

Petri, Fabio (2012). "On Recent Reformulations of the Labour Theory of Value," Quaderni del Dipartamento di Economia Politica e Statistica, Università degli Studi di Siena, No. 643.

Shaikh, Anwar (1977). "Marx's Theory of Value and the Transformation Problem,"in Jesse Schwartz (ed.), The Subtle Anatomy of Capitalism. Goodyear Publ. Co.