What follows is an unusually long and math-heavy essay compared to other writing on RedSails; not coincidentally, it’s also the first time we’ve had to render math by implementing LATEX. [1] In our opinion the effort is worth it — the transformation problem has dogged Marxism for long enough, and we do not want our readers to be caught by surprise when neoclassical economists (or worse, other Marxists) throw it in their faces.

The political stakes are straightforward: Marxism ceases to be Marxism when it bails on the labor theory of value. Intellectually, Wright’s research opens the door to further investigations of the fault line between capitalist and natural necessity running through economic thought and modeling. [2] [3] It is our hope that further work in this direction will be able to expose more and more concrete ways in which capitalist social arrangements, despite their seeming necessity, are ultimately irrational and superable. — N. F.