On the Problem of Value Transformation

The article analyzes one of the key questions addressed to the followers of the economic teaching of K. Marx after the publication of the third volume of “Capital”. In 1906, the Russian economist L. Bortkevich created a model in the form of a system of equations linking the value of goods and the prices of their production. Based on the assumptions and model calculations he made, L. Bortkevich concluded that it is impossible to simultaneously fulfill the equations derived by Marx for the sums of the value of goods and the prices of their production and the sums of all created surplus value and total profit. This conclusion, being mathematically proven, was subsequently used by anti-Marxists and non-Marxists to recognize Marx's doctrine of average profit as incorrect and, accordingly, Marx's economic doctrine as a whole. This article reveals the perfect andwell-disguised forgery by L. Bortkevich in formulating the assumptions of the model, which allowed to discuss the incorrectness of Marx's solution of the “transformation problem” and then to slight Marxists thereon.