La trasformazione dei valori in prezzi di produzione. Il capitolo IX del Terzo libro del Capitale

Abstract

More than 120 year have passed since the Capital’s Third Volume has been published. What has gone down in history as the “Cambridge Capital Controversy” has retained its actuality to this day. Harsh criticisms have been especially directed towards the Capital’s Third Volume’s Ninth chapter containing the tables on the transformation of values into prices of production. Criticism has especially involved the accusation that Marx would have transformed the outputs but not the inputs, consequently compromising the consistency of his argument. We will begin by showing that Bortkiewicz’s critique, with its division of the Ninth chapter’s tables’ five branches in three manufacturing sectors (means of production, means of consumption, luxury goods), portrays the impossibility of any exchange between the sectors and therefore cannot be used to criticize Marx. Sraffa’s model that profit and wages stand in inverse proportion to each other has been accepted as an undeniable paradigm. Despite that, this model cannot be considered as a development of Marx’s thought. By way of conclusion a solution will be searched by using once again Marx’s tables in the Third Volume’s Ninth chapter.

Marx; Bortkiewicz; Sraffa; “Capital” Dispute; Transformation of Values into Prices.