In 4268 Alejandro writes: > >I think this is Sweezy version in his edition of one of Bort's articles. >I'm not sure about that. To point out only one thing. At the beginning of >that article, Bort. credits Tugan for having devised "the" transformation >method. Actually, Bort. offers an algebraical elaboration of what Tugan >produced in arithmetical terms. But the credit for the *conceptual* work >here is for Tugan, as Bort. himself acknowledges. Now, in 1905, Tugan was >anti-Marxist and his theoretical work had already an ideological >anti-Marxist purpose. Later on he was candidate for the Liberal Party and, >of course, opposed the Bolsheviks serving in the nationalist ukrainian >goverment. He died when he was emigrating to Paris. Too bad Professor Tugan Baronwsky didn't live long enough to confront the falsification of his theory of the happy merry-go-round of capital accumulation. > In Bort. case, I don't >think he was a socialdemocrat, even a right wing one, and his intervention >in this debate is part of what can be called the "revisionist debate", in >which we should examine the diverse theoretical contributions. The quotes unconvered by Michele Naples and Alan Freeman about his Walrasian interest in extirpating sequentialism are interesting to say the least. > >It seems to me that Sweezy was interested in a "mild" version of Bort. >because he was an author well-suited to introduce an "academic" version of >Marx in the English speaking world. Reading Bort's article people could see >that Marxian Political Economy can "use mathematics", and hence was as >"serious" and "fashionalble" as the other one. Bort's article was perfect >for this. I think the treatment of the theory of value in Sweezy's book deserves a careful critique (there is of course Postone's critique of the Sweezy-Meek-Dobb tradition). From the outset there is no attention to the forms of value, the explanation of the dazzling (puzzling) money form (this is simply astonishing to me), the 3 peculiarities of the value form. Sweezy then claims that the Marxian "law of value is essentially a theory of general equilibrium developed in the first instance with reference to simple commodity production and later on adapted to capitalism." I continue to be baffled by Gil's claim that Marx held that value determined relative prices. We all know that Marx finished vol 3 before vol 1. So if in vol 1, Marx equates the surplus value produced by a firm with the profit it appropriates, he obviously has in mind "an average industry" which Meek claims is similar to Sraffa's basic industry. It is obvious that Marx knew perfectly well in vol 1 that commodities do not exchange at value. At any rate, Sweezy argued that Marx's labor theory of value was initially developed in vol 1 on the assumption of an equal VCC for all firms. He praises Bortkiewicz for devising a method which can be used once this assumption is dropped, and thus praises Bortkiewicz for advancing Marx! Of course the question comes back to Grossmann. Did Sweezy misunderstand what Grossmann meant by simplfying assumption? That is, did Grossmann argue not that Marx assumed each industry had the same VCC but rather that Marx initially treated an individual capital only as a perfect aliquot of total capital (the correct position of Fred and Felton Shortall for example)? It is obvious that Marx was in fact doing the latter. So did Sweezy misread the Grossmann method of successive appromixations which he had taken over? Or did he wed himself to what was faulty in Grossmann's method essay? Either way, Sweezy has the incorrect understanding of the kind of abstraction at work in vol 1. (Grossmann was saying the right thing; he argued that Marx made assumptions necessary to study a pure capitalism and thus had an excess of form in vol 1; an identical VCC does not belong to the concept of pure capitalism--which opens up questions raised by the Uno school which has not recognized its methodological debt to Grossmann as did for example Abram Harris). Of course there is the other criticism. Let us say (as is true) that Marx had long ago figured out the law of value governs bourgeois society in the form of the average rate of profit exactly as the VCCs become more dispersed due to the uneven nature of on going technical development. Then we are brought back to the criticism that this exact hypothesis which is already clearly formed in TSV either breaks down upon transformation of the inputs in terms of a vector of equilibrium prices (Ajit, Gil, Steve) or cannot have its validity established if no determinate transformation of the inputs is possible (Allin). Of course the latter is a much weaker claim than the charge of fatal logical defect which itself is based on absurd premises. And I have tried to indicate that its plausibity can be establshed despite the inability to transform the inputs in a determinate way, leaving the theory to be tested in the field of empirical practice. All the best, Rakesh
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