Hey no worries! I enjoy these comments, they get me thinking. Especially because while I am aware of TSSI, I haven't studied it in depth as much as I have Wright's work. I consider myself still learning off of this, so taking time to give Kliman's work more thought is just a continuation of my own learning. I will admit, that I have some gut feeling that the labor theory of value should, and can, be a quantitative theory which also can explain value and price formation. And maybe it turns out I'm completely wrong, but I'll just keep reading and learning and seeing where it leads. In fact, this is something that excites me about this reading group. I'd like to go through Capital with others here with these debates in mind. My own understanding of Ian Wright's work also comes from Shaikh's interpretation of how the Transformation Problem is to be interpreted in his paper "Neo-Ricardian Economics: A Wealth of Algebra, A Poverty of Theory" (its title continuing the Marxist trend of being snarky and sarcastic lol). In it, he does criticize neo-Ricardians dismissal of value and the LTV, and he argues that the correlation between surplus value and profit is preserved if one considers not just the circuit of capital, but also the circuit of revenue - considering the surplus value that is consumed by capitalists when they purchase consumption items. Shaikh also reiterates this argument in his lectures for his book Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises. This is essentially (as I see it) what Wright's capitalist consumption matrix C is measuring in his "super-integrated labor-values." Of course, the difference in our understanding sounds like it comes down to how quantitative vs qualitative Marx's theory of value should be, and whether the entire input-output framework is the right way to approach this.

I definitely get what you mean, though, by writers which tend to "modernize" Marx. I often get a bad taste in my mouth by them too, and usually some alarm bells go off. Given that, I think my STEM-bias though makes me inclined to think that the LTV can be quantitative, though, and that "the numbers should work out". And Wright's explanations make sense to me given that mindset. But, like I said, I need to give TSSI a fair investigation too. It's just sometimes not fun going through years of (often harsh) debates back and forth between the various interpretations of Capital.

This is fun, though. And, like I said, I'm excited to keep these debates in mind as we continue reading!

I'll give more thoughts as they come to me. And feel free to share your writings on Marx's value theory being more valuable as a qualitative theory.