>Dear Rakesh: > >(1) Re: "your critique of the LTV, as it stands, is predicated on your >prima facie preposterous claim that Marx should have understood the use of >dead labor can equally be the source of new value as surplus labor" > >My critique of the LTV is predicated on the proposition that Marx's >dialectics contradicts the LTV. You may believe the claim preposterous--the >referees for the History of Political Economy and the Journal of the >History of Economic Thought did not. You can check the 1993 issues of the >latter publication if you so desire. Steve, why invoke the authority of the editors of journals of bourgeois economics to me? We both know that I do not think the bar is very high to criticize Marx among professional economists. On the other hand, the bar is higher to criticize, say, general equilibrium theory, the neoclassical synthesis, interdependence or realist schools in political science from a marxist perspective, the misuse of game theory or rational choice theory, various forms of genetic reductionism presently purveyed in the popular press, the pesticide treadmill, the ideology of the free press, the foundational importance of the eugenic vision in the development of the supposedly neutral tools of statistical analysis or population genetics, the great importance of slavery in the early stages of capital accumulation, the persistence of gender and racial discrimination in the labor market, the overuse of computers by children in the schools, lax regulation of lead exposure. > >(2) One justified aspect of the TSS attempt to rebut Sraffian critiques is >that they apply a static yardstick to a dynamic theory. However, it is >possible to grant that proposition and still undertake a dynamic version of >that critique. This would involve setting up a system in which all rates of >change were constant as a "dynamic equilibrium" and then seeing whether the >TSS characterisation was still sustainable when organic compositions of >capital differed between industries. I expect that TSS would fail this test. Yes but you said that your other work is about disequilbrium dynamics, no? So why allow that in every facet of economics but the resolution of the transformation problem? This is what has me confused. You said I had created a false intellectual opposition, though it seems to me that the contradiction is in your own pronouncements. That said, I certainly don't think that the absence of a transformation problem means the Marxian labor theory of value is above criticism on a variety of other grounds. > I regard your comments on >this issue as gratuitous and completely irrelevant to my own way of >thinking. If you wish to characterise me somewhat more accurately, then I >suggest you read what I have actually published. I wasn't wishing to characterize you. Just noted that there is a very interesting case of someone who tried to maintain both equilibrium thinking and dynamics at the same time. Some have said that equilibrium for schumpeter is nothing more than a counterfactual demonstration of just how different a social system would be if there were no innovation; others have said equilibrium represents a real force which either entrepreneurs must break through to get their superprofits or which keeps the economy together despite on going technological innovation; yet others have said it is simply an unresolved contradiction and Schumpeter can only break equilibrium by the deus ex machina of credit or the postulation of the special energies of the entrepreneur. I wish it had been the first but it is surely some mixture of the last two kinds of things (equilibrium as real force and unresolved contradiction), no? So if I was characterizing you, the point was that you seem to be exhibiting the same kinds of contradictions as the greatest of bourgeois economists. Maybe it's an insult, mabye not. Yours, Rakesh
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Oct 31 2000 - 00:00:09 EST