[OPEL:6180] Re: Response to Andrew Kliman

Paul Cockshott (wpc@CS.STRATH.AC.UK)
Thu, 12 Feb 1998 11:33:14 +0000

jurriaan bendien wrote:
>
> Andrew Kliman writes:
>
> > ... the question of whether a "non-fatal" logical contradiction is
> > present... what criteria exist for deciding whether a particular logical
> > contradiction is fatal or not?
> >
> Reply:
>
> I would say that if a logical contradiction is fatal, then a manifestly
> true statement cannot be maintained without invalidating one or more basic
> assumptions on which Marx's entire theory is based. I personally do not
> think Marx's theory is "incoherent" in this sense, really the question for
> me is only whether and to what extent modern capitalism moves according to
> the laws of motion he specified, given the enormous disparities in organic
> compositions between industries reached today, given monopoly rents, given
> the nature of the modern international financial apparatus and so on. That
> is more an empirical question, which challenges us to develop Marx's theory
> further I think.
>
Do you have evidence that the dispersion in organic composition
has risen over time?