I am inclined to side with Michael Perelman (1987, 110–127): the transformation problem is not a problem at all – it is a dialectical heuristic. It is not a flaw in Marx’s logic that leads to the irreconcilability of real value and price – it is that these two are never reconciled under capitalism. The gap between the two is a productive lacuna in Marx’s work which allows us to pinpoint a key element of capitalist crisis, and also, importantly, to locate finance as a key element of a much broader system of exploitation, not just a particularly ugly form of economic power in its own right.

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 103