Thanks to Alan for his cogent and detailed response to my post on the Kliman/McGlone/Freeman (et al.) understanding of Marx's writing on value and prices. I too am somewhat dismayed that a literature of this age (since 1988 at least), size, and degree of internal coherence has received so little critical attention. I'm probably not the right one to supply this attention. However, here we are, and so far I do not see a satisfactory answer to a fundamental criticism of the approach. However, before I get into that, a bit of separating wheat from chaff is in order. Recall I raised two issues with respect to what I'll abbreviate as the KMF approach, one having to do with the dynamic system being proposed (or reaffirmed) and the other concerning the value-theoretic interpretation of that system. From's Alan's post I see that my argument on the former point is based on misinterpreting a possible outcome of the approach (i.e., iteration to the Sraffian simultaneous-equation solution on the assumption of equalized profit rates in every iteration) as one of its essential characteristics, and criticizing it on that basis. Perhaps I can be excused for this misinterpretation, since observation of this outcome didn't originate with me (e.g., double- check above the subject heading under which this discussion arose!), but in any case I of course agree that the KMF framework need not suppose equalized profit rates or convergence. A minor point: while I agree with Alan that equalized profit rates *per se* are not necessary to guarantee convergence, it remains the case that *some* stationary distribution of profit rates must be presumed, for the same reason that a constant technical matrix is required. Equal profit rates is the most obvious candidate, since Marxian theory does not incorporate such considerations as risk preference (and thus, for example, value theory cannot account for systematic differentials between average rate of return on equity and average rate of return on debt--but that's a separate post, speaking to the desirability of eclecticism). But then the substance of my remark still holds, although with much less significant consequence: presuming a stationary profit rate matrix together with an iterating price matrix invokes an analytically unjustified distinction in the market determination process for profit rates and commodity prices. That said, the bottom line is Alan's: the basic question here is the actual nature of the dynamic system, granting that it may not involve a stationary profit rate vector or technical matrix. Agreed. Alan spices this and related comments with several zingers against neoclassical economics which doubly miss their mark, first, because I'm not a neoclassical economist, and second, because there is nothing in the KMF approach which is *intrinsically* foreign to neoclassical economics. His paraphrase of Laplace could have as readily been uttered by a neoclassicist as by a Marxist; Alan in particular might be sensitive to the implied distinction between *common or traditional* and *necessary* practice. Of course, KMF interpret the results of their analysis in a distinctly un-neoclassical fashion, but that leads us to the "wheat" part of the discussion, which for manageability's sake I'll put on a separate post. Gil Skillman
