I agree that it's about time I read the papers, since god knows I've thrown
enough rocks at what I allege to be a glass house.
On the first substantive point, I expect to disagree with your static logic
as well in that case; but of course I'll need to read it in detail before I
can be sure.
On the second, my comment about everything changing didn't mean that I
believed that your interpretation needed different profit rates to refute
Okishio. Equally, that it can do so with equal profit rates doesn't in my
eyes vindidate or validate TSS--and of course I'm sure it doesn't in your
eyes either.
The real punchline of my post was of course that I disagree that Marx began
from the premise that labor is the only source of value. I argue that he
began from a more general, dialectical set of axioms, which when properly
applied reach the result that labor and commodities jointly are the source
of value. If people want to debate underlying causes--and Copernican
revolutions--then I feel they should be willing to debate that one too,
rather than just dismiss it.
Cheers,
Steve
At 09:58 AM 2/20/01 -0500, you wrote:
>In reply to OPE-L 4989.
>
>Well, Steve, not only have you not studied the TSSI well enough to
>be throwing stones, but you don't even know what you think you
>know. That is, what you assert out of ignorance is simply
>incorrect.
>
>I thought I had corrected your misunderstanding in the past, and
>that you responded that you would keep my points in mind when you
>finally got down to studying our work. But now you're coming back
>with the same incorrect stuff, apparently before you have studied
>our work.
>
>I'm referring to your comment that "if Marx's transformation of
>values into prices doesn't work in a system of simultaneous
>equations, then it won't work in a dynamic system as well." I'm
>also referring to your comment in OPE-L 4887: "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. ...
>[This] 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."
>
>Of course, when you wrote OPE-L 4887 -- only ONE WEEK ago -- you
>conceded that "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)."
>
>For the record:
>
>First, the TSSI does not vindicate Marx's account of the
>transformation of values into prices of production by invoking
>some sort of perpetual disequilibrium. As we interpret his
>concepts, his transformation of values into prices DOES work in a
>system of simultaneous equations.
>
>Second, we do not refute the Okishio theorem, and thereby
>vindicate the logical coherence of Marx's law of the tendential
>fall in the profit rate, by invoking unequal profit rates across
>sectors. Marx's logic succeeds, and the Okishio theorem fails,
>even when profit rates are always and everywhere equal. You don't
>need to take my word for it. In the latest volume of _Research in
>Political Economy_, Duncan Foley writes (p. 282): "I understand
>Freeman and Kliman to be arguing that Okishio's theorem as
>literally stated is wrong because it is possible for the money and
>labor rates of profit to fall under the circumstances specified in
>its hypotheses. I accept their examples as establishing this
>possibility."
>
>Andrew ("Drewk") Kliman
>Dept. of Social Sciences
>Pace University
>Pleasantville, NY 10570 USA
>phone: (914) 773-3968
>fax: (914) 773-3951
>
>Home: 60 W. 76th St. #4E
>New York, NY 10023 USA
>
>"The practice of philosophy is itself theoretical. It is the
>critique that measures the individual existence by the essence,
>the particular reality by the Idea."
>
>
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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