[ show plain text ]
Andrew,
But underneath all the FRP stuff in the first half
of this century lurked what you call the physicalism/
simultaneism argument. That is, the critics of the
FRP imputed to Marx a simple notion of technical
change as labor displacing. For them, his argument
was that the constant-capital to output ratio was
increasing. Hence, the Dobb bit about increasing
wages as part of the mechanism that brings about a
FRP. This stuff lingers on today in Laibman's work
under the rubric of class struggle.
Earlier defenders of Marx -- Mattick and Grossmann --
never really answer those early critics. Frankly, I'm
unsure of what their defenses were in physical terms.
Given it never got to that level, we find Sweezy in
1974 arguing against Marx's FRP by describing what
he calls a "period of machinofacture" as something beyond
Marx's time that Marx never anticipated.
Hence, the early critics never dealt with the case of a
constant real wage as they were consciously or unconsciously
aware of the Okishio bit. Their concept of value, redundant
though it is, fits perfectly into what you term
the phyicalism/simltaneism.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed May 31 2000 - 00:00:07 EDT