Thanks for a reply, even if it is to say that my post puzzles you. The implication of my post was that I believe Marx would have applied his dialectical 'ceteris paribus' to some of the forces you allow to alter at the same stage of analysis. I expect that you, like Marx, would not consider technical change when explaining that labor is the only source of surplus (an explanation I reject, but that's by the by). However, when it comes to mapping from values to prices (I know that statement can be seen as dualist, but I too have a 'single system' interpretation that doesn't see any distinction between values and prices at the core level of analysis, so bear with me), I don't accept that Marx allowed technical change to occur, whereas you do. By allowing technical change (and other factors as well), you can maintain a consistency between the claim that labor is the only source of value, and the price dynamics of a multi-sectoral economy. My feeling is that Marx would reject this outright in an analytic sense: yes it is true that technical change is going on all the time, and yes at a higher level of analysis one must incorporate and explain it; but at the level of working out price dynamics, the occurrence of (uneven?) technical change should not be crucial to maintaining the veracity of the claim that labor is the only source of value. Why do I believe Marx would reject this? Because, at least on first glance, it allows you to put any numbers you like into your system--it brings in a level of arbitrariness which may appear to make the elaborated system (multi-commodity) consistent with its precept (labor as the only source of value), but which makes it impossible to have any structured analysis of any issue beyond that. I concede this is a perspective garnered from reading OPE posts rather than the original Kliman/Freeman/etc papers, so I may be misrepresenting to some extent (I'll know for sure when I finally have time to read the originals). But the impact of the TSS approach seems to be a methodological mayhem which clouds rather than clarifies the workings of capitalism. Steve At 12:55 AM 2/13/01 -0500, you wrote: >Steve Keen's OPE-L 4873 puzzles me. I do not see that, or how, >the implication of my comment is to reject the ceteris paribus >assumption or its equivalent. I employ that assumption all the >time. > >As for the rest, market movements in wages weren't part of Marx's >explanation of the origin of surplus-value, but they certainly >*did* "form a part of Marx's >explanation of the ... magnitude of surplus[-value]." (For just >one of many examples, see his discussion in Ch. 25 of Capital, >Vol. I.) And it is a good thing, too. Because if Marx's >explanation of what determines the magnitude of surplus-value >*excluded* these wage movements, he would (by definition) have >been claiming that the magnitude of surplus-value is NOT >influenced by these wage movements. And that would have been >false. > >It is one thing to focus on some of the many determinants of a >phenomenon. It is another to claim that they are the sole >determinants. > > >Andrew Kliman > > Dr. Steve Keen Senior Lecturer Economics & Finance Campbelltown, Building 11 Room 30, School of Economics and Finance UNIVERSITY WESTERN SYDNEY LOCKED BAG 1797 PENRITH SOUTH DC NSW 1797 Australia s.keen@uws.edu.au 61 2 4620-3016 Fax 61 2 4626-6683 Home 02 9558-8018 Mobile 0409 716 088 Home Page: http://bus.macarthur.uws.edu.au/steve-keen/
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