Re: [OPE] No rise is s/v? Kliman's empirical work on the falling rate of profit

Phil,

Karl Marx wrote you a couple of years back:

  "There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread
the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its
luminous summits."

It was an open letter and I kept a copy, just in case. (I know you must
know this quote; I'm just having a bit of fun with it.)

For myself, I will say emphatically that 'easy' is absolutely no
criterion I would ever accept. In the instant case, 'easy' leads to a
report of the behavior of s/v, an extremely important concept needing
accurate work.

On the other hand, if one wants to claim that Marx's discussion of
unproductive labor is wrong and 'easy' is scientifically more accurate,
we could weight the merits of whatever argument is presented. (Kliman,
for one example, doesn't do that in his draft; indeed he doesn't even
mention the existence of the topic in 105 pages of text. Of course, his
is a first draft and not a published piece, so perhaps a
correction/clarification is in the offing. But, if it were me, I would
not have let a first draft out without considering, one way or another,
such an important topic.)

For those who are not aware, Victor Kasper has been working for years on
an computerized empirical presentation of the U.S. economy. He is
making a presentation of part of his work at the Amherst conference,
tentatively scheduled for the time slot of Saturday, Nov. 7, 10:30-12:00
am. As I understand, he is attempting to have in place a Marxist
modeling of U.S. capitalism which remains in place and updated as the
years move forward. It is one of those projects which consumes a huge
amount of time and energy for the researcher. It is not easy.

I quite doubt Jerry is resting his case.

Paul

=====
(V23) THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF 9-11, Seven Stories Press softcover, 2008 2nd ed
(V24) TRANSITIONS IN LATIN AMERICA .... (V25) WHY CAPITALISM SURVIVES CRISES
====> Research in Political Economy, Emerald Group, Bingley, UK
====> Paul Zarembka, Editor www.buffalo.edu/~zarembka

Philip Dunn wrote:
> On Sat, 2009-10-17 at 20:24 -0400, Gerald Levy wrote:
>
>>> What's wrong with easy, Paul? It is preferable to difficult or downright
>>> impossible.
>>>
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> Hi Phil (and Paul Z):
>>
>> Easy is one thing, but Paul Z said _too_ easy.
>>
>> In solidarity, Jerry
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>
>>
> Hi Gerry,
>
> You rest your case?
>
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Received on Sun Oct 18 09:54:15 2009