Andrew I wrote in [OPE-L:5030]: > I'm sorry I'm not terribly sympathetic to your "getting tired" > problem. You didn't seem sympathetic when I was tired of your > haranguing me about v = 0 for months and months on end. > Your correction was not one I found to be particularly gracious. > (I thought you might me interested in this last comment given your > concern with tone.) The issue of the v = 0 assumption was re-raised by Paul B. You, then, brought me back into the debate with your "haranguing comment". In my response, I told you that if you let it drop, I wouldn't respond. Indeed, I didn't respond even when you defended the belief that I was "haranguing" and even though I disagreed strongly with your response to Paul. Now, since you have re-raised the issue again, I will respond by saying something *new* on this thread. You argue that the v. = of assumption goes back to Marx. I say: the source of the v. = 0 assumption is on page 22 of: *** Pierro Sraffa's _Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities_***. See "Fig 1" and the surrounding text. Moreover, the contemporary *context* for using the v = 0 assumption dates back to efforts by Marxists to respond, favorably or unfavorably, to Sraffa and Steedman. Thus, those who were at work developing a critique of the Sraffian theory including a critique of Steedman *chose* to employ the assumptions that they (the Sraffians) used. One might ask whether, by so doing, these critics substituted the Sraffian *methodology* as embodied in his mathematical formalizations for that of Marx. In conversation with a leading spokesperson for the TSSI a number of years ago, the above source for the v = 0 assumption was brought to my attention. It was defended on totally *pragmatic* grounds: i.e. that the Sraffians wouldn't accept a "methodological" critique of their assumptions. I think that "methodological critiques" are often much more forceful that mathematical formalizations (Robinson's critique of H-O-S comes to mind). The above is the *source* -- from a history of political economy standpoint -- for the v = 0 assumption. The counter-claim that it originated in Marx is as credible, imo, as the claim that in the year 2001 there is a "new theory of value" developed by Marx. In solidarity, Jerry
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