[OPE-L:3927] Grossmann

From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@Princeton.EDU)
Date: Sun Oct 01 2000 - 12:35:10 EDT


Re 3925

>
>Rakesh:
>"This kind of dynamic is in the Bauer scheme which Grossmann extends.	If
>I remember correctly, you thought this to be an *absurd* feature of the
>extended scheme"
>
>What I say was absurd was breakdown due to excess demand.  I *also*,
>separately, said that the FRP has nothing to do with the breakdown -- the
>scheme mechanically projects rates of growth of C & V without regard to
>the rate of profit.

Andrew (K),
My memory is that you also wrote that it was absurd for Grossmann to 
allow the rate of accumulation to accelerate even as the rate of 
profit falls. As for the mechanical rate of growth of C and V, what 
is this but an ever growing percentage of SV being capitalized or 
accumulated even as the rate of profit is falling? So again why is it 
absurd to allow for such a mechanical projection without regard to 
the rate of profit in 'modelling' Marx's ideas about the accumulation 
process?


>
>
>Rakesh: "(you have had only the most disparaging things to say about my
>hero),"
>
>False.  Please retract.  You fail to distinguish between a person, a
>book, and a scheme (due to someone else, that G. doesn't necessarily
>endorse).


No you dismissed Grossmann for basing his breakdown theory on a 
scheme in which unit values remain constant; then I reminded you that 
Grossmann devoted an entire chapter to relaxing Bauer's assumption in 
order to try to formulate--for the first time in the history of 
Marxian thought, he claimed-- a truly dynamic understanding of the 
accumulation process (the effort was extended in his dynamics book). 
When I pointed out to you that Grossmann himself highlighted how 
misleading the scheme was because it assumed constant values, you 
simply said you stood by your critique. I took that to be completely 
and fully non-responsive.You simply have failed to give Grossmann his 
due, to admit that he recognized many of the problems in the Bauer 
scheme which critics like you claim Grossmann fantastically avoided. 
Howard and King's criticism of Grossmann makes the same mistake.

You then note:

>
>(The latest issue of the URPE Newsletter contains a personal attack
>against a single person as its response to 19 different individuals'
>criticisms of RRPE *policy*.  Supposedly that one person is an
>Antichrist who managed to hoodwink 18 other very stupid, very
>gullible, very ignorant, people into signing and even writing (!)
>documents they did not understand.)


Talk about diversionary? Do you think I have the slightest idea what 
you are talking about? I don't really read RRPE; as must be obvious 
to you all, I am not an economist.  Have I calumnied you? I can 
remember saying to several people that many of your arguments are 
powerful. I think what you have to say should  be available. I have 
learned a lot from you.




>
>"but then what do you make of Capital 3 Penguin, p.375?!"
>
>Never said coincidence of rising rate of accumulation (esp. physical
>accumulation) and FRP was absurd.  I also note that the argument there is
>non-causal.

OK then why is it not absurd? You don't think the six reasons Marx 
gives are causes? I am also uncomfortable with his argument here. But 
it is his vision of the accumulation process indeed. So why did he 
see things proceeding this way?



>Rakesh:
>"While no new value is created in exchange, this does not mean that the
>value substance is not altered in and through ex-change."
>
>Diversionary.	My original comment was this:  "In Marx's theory, value
>cannot be altered in exchange, so total price in the market is
>constrained to equal the total value already produced."  Obviously, this
>deals with the *magnitude* of value.


Here I agree with you; however I think that when marxists say that 
the value substance is not altered in exchange in terms of magnitude, 
they are implicitly missing how indeed the value substance is 
changing in (ex)change. Money then seems not be a necessary form of 
appearance of value which can exist outside of exchange or the money 
form.  So I do think value is altered, though not quantitatively 
increased, in exchange.

>
>
>This is non-responsive and diversionary.  It also confuses exchange and
>money.  In Marx's view, things have a money price BEFORE they come into
>the market.

As Andrew Brown has noted, they only have an ideal money price. But 
not until commodity value is actually ex-changed into money is value 
actualized.

Again I don't understand why marx's discovery of the equilibrium 
condition is not structuralist, as you define the term.

All the best, Rakesh



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