On Sun, 22 Oct 2000, Alejandro Ramos wrote: > In addition to this, it still strikes me that a learned > Marxist such Allin remains a defender of a theoretical > position explicitly devised and presented by his author in > order to show that Marx was absolutely wrong. But Allin does > this in the naive belief that he's defending Marx! Surely the motivation of an author does not provide a criterion of the correctness of his arguments. Besides (though you are more familiar than I with the early literature on Marx) I didn't think Bortkiewicz was motivated by ideological opposition to Marxism -- though I gather he was partly motivated by a desire to set the record straight on what he regarded as some invalid criticisms of Ricardo on Marx's part (e.g. regarding the role of Department III in determining the general rate of profit). For what it's worth, I don't see my role as "defending Marx" so much as defending what I see as most important and valid in his thinking. Allin Cottrell.
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