Editing Transformation problem (section)

=== Engels ===
[[Friedrich Engels]], the editor of volume 3 of ''Capital'', hinted since 1894 at an alternative way to look at the matter. His view was that the pure Marxian "law of value" of volume 1 and the "transformed" prices of volume 3 applied to different periods of economic history. In particular, the "law of value" would have prevailed in pre-capitalist exchange economies, from Babylon to the 15th century, while the "transformed" prices would have materialized under capitalism: see Engels's quotation by Morishima and Catephores (1975), p.&nbsp;310.

Engels's reasoning was later taken up by Meek (1956) and Nell (1973). These authors argued that, whatever one might say of his interpretation of capitalism, Marx's "value" theory retains its usefulness as a tool to interpret pre-capitalist societies, because, they maintained, in pre-capitalist exchange economies there were no "prices of production" with a uniform rate of return (or "profit") on capital. It hence follows that Marx's transformation must have had a ''historical'' dimension, given by the actual transition to capitalist production (and no more Marxian "values") at the beginning of the modern era. In this case, this true "historical transformation" could and should take the place of the mathematical transformation postulated by Marx in chapter 9 of volume 3.