Setting the Record Straight on Karl Marx’s Value TheoryANDREW GILLEY

12 NOVEMBER 2014

A Century of Inconsistency“Although the controversy is a century old, it is possible to survey it briefly...Subsequent critiques have generally been little more than extensions and elaborations, and often plain repetitions, of points made by Dmitriev in 1897 and Bortkiewicz in 1906-1907.”

-Kliman (2007)

Bortkiewicz’ Centurial Shadow “The crux of Bortkiewicz’s argument is that Marx’s account produces a difference between input and output prices, and that this difference leads to ‘internal contradictions’…”

“Bortkiewicz ‘corrected’ Marx’s account by means of a model that eliminated the difference between input and output prices…”

-Kliman (2007)

Simultaneous vs. Temporal Valuation

“Simultaneous valuation is the a priori stipulation that the per-unit value (or price) of each input must equal the per-unit value (or price) of the same good or service when produced as an output of the same period.”

“Temporal valuation is simply non-simultaneous valuation. Proponents of the TSSI deny that there is any sense in which Marx held…that inputs entering production now and outputs emerging later must have the same prices and values.”

-Kliman (2007)

The TSSI “Marx’s theories need not be interpreted in a way that renders them internally inconsistent. An alternative interpretation developed during the last quarter-century—the temporal single-system interpretation (TSSI)—eliminates all of the apparent inconsistencies.”

“Repudiation of simultaneous valuation is almost sufficient, and in conjunction with the single-system interpretation, is sufficient, to refute the whole set of alleged proofs of inconsistency.”

-Kliman (2007)

Whig History “the formalisation of Marx's theory of value which descends from Bortkiewicz is a dead end which has served primarily to assimilate Marx to General Competitive Equilibrium.”

-Freeman (1996)

“The ‘school led by Léon Walras’ is now the dominant one. A somewhat more developed version of his general equilibrium model is the foundation of modern neoclassical economics. His and most subsequent general equilibrium models have been simultaneist…”

-Kliman (2007)

Setting the Record Straight “The new orthodox Marxists (NOMists) assert that Marx's formulations…are literally and completely correct; that Marx made no errors…”

-Laibman (2004)

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

-Planck (1949)