Re Paul Z. 4510: [....] Paul Z. >>>"A History of Marxian Economics" by Howard and King (a survey I don't >>>much care for, but it surely leads one to lots of sources). Alejandro R. >>This is one of the most biased books I have seen in my life. Frankly, I >>envy their resources availability but unfortunately the authors wasted >>them. I think you have mentioned their treatment of Rosa Luxemburg's >>work... Paul Z. >Sadly, I have to agree with you. Author after author they evaluate is not >"good enough" for them. My reply: I don't think this is wholly correct. For example, in Vol I, pp. 59-62, they write (all emphases added): "There were however important differences between Marx and Dmitriev. The later rejected the Marxian disctiction betweeen constant and variable capital, Bortkiewicz noted, and also used algebra instead numerical examples. This was more significant than it appearead, implying a major methodological cleavage: Dmitriev argue in terms of *simultaneous determination*, while Marx reasoned in a cause-effect chain which Bortkiewicz criticised as the *fallacy* of successivism".... "Equations 3.10 and 3.11 embody Marx's two invariance conditions. In general it is *imposible* to satisfy them both, as Bortkiewicz *demonstrates* in several numerical examples..." "Marx was *wrong* to suppose that p = S/(C+V)." "None to the prominent theoreticians of the II Intl. paid any atteintion to the issue. The 35-year gap is a sad reflection of the level of *scientific* research in Marxian political economy... *Not until* the apparatus of *linear economics* emerged through the work of ... von Neumann and Leontief did discussion of the 'quantitative' value problem resume." So, there are SOME authors (Dmitriev, Bortkiewicz, von Neumann, Leontief), SOME methods (simultaneous determination, linear economics) that, indeed, are "good enough", as you said, or "scientific", as Howard & King write. OTHER author (Marx), OTHER points of view (difference between c and v), OTHER results (double equality), OTHER methods (successivism) are simply "wrong" and "fallacious". Their bias is so primitive and manifest that, for them, "using algebra" can only be thinking in terms of "simultaneous determination"! Alejandro R.
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