A reply to the bizarre [OPE-L:5084]:
My latest charge against Jerry, BTW, has nothing to do with suppression. It has to do with his personal vilification of me: "Kliman commented that Levy's demands were part of an 'ongoing campaign of personal vilification, undertaken in order to discredit the IWGVT's struggle for pluralism in value theory,'
JL: Actually, Kliman is making two charges. One has to do with a "campaign" and the other has to do with *motivation* (see end of sentence and beginning of next sentence).
especially the right of Marx's value theory to contend as an alternative to the theories of other Marxists. 'But Levy's far from alone in plying these ad hominem attacks' ...."
JL: let me deal with the last claim first. There is *no evidence whatsoever* that suggests that what Kliman labels as a "campaign" is motivated by the above.
His charge is thereby refuted.
I *should* respond to the following by simply asking others to check the archives. But, in order to highlight the utter absurdity of the following I will respond further.
Anticipating Jerry's next move, I will say that I will be willing to retract my charge of personal vilification if he can show that
(a) he treated Duncan Foley and me equally during the period in which both Duncan and I were employing the v = 0 assumption;
JL: Firstly, note well that the debate on the legitimacy of the v = 0 assumption was part of a debate on *THEORY*. If we were to claim that each time a Marxist or economist challenges another on the legitimacy of an assumption employed, ... well, the mind boggles at what that would mean for scholarly and/or comradely discussion. Duncan and I, as I recall, did have a couple (or more) exchanges on this issue. The reasons Kliman was responded to at greater length include: (1) the variety of rationalizations employed by Kliman in defense of that assumption (including what I believe to be a misrepresentation about Marx) ; Duncan, if I recall correctly, gave just one reason for occasionally employing the v = 0 assumption; (2) the fact that Kliman has repeatedly used that assumption on-list and elsewhere, has refused to drop it, and has sometimes insisted that the "numerical examples" of others employ it; (3) it is a central assumption to many, many "illustrations" that he used.
(b) he didn't present himself to my wife as a friend of mine in order to start a conversation with her and then publicize to this list, out of context and without her permission, a statement she made during that private conversation, in order to make me look bad and (without success, thank god) to try to create dissension between us;
JL: This charge is truly bizarre ... bordering on .....
At a Socialist Scholars Conference in NYC a number of years ago (3? 4?), I was milling around in the lobby checking-out the literature tables and saying "Hi" to a bunch of old friends and others. When I told her that I knew Andrew through an Internet mailing list, OPE-L, she said that she was married to him. We then had a brief conversation. It was light talk: I mentioned that I had been to their apartment to meet him and Alejandro R and that I liked her cats. The rest of the conversation was mostly about the cats. I then simply asked her to tell him that I stopped by to say "Hi"!"
If that is "personal villification" [!!] it certainly gives new meaning to the term. Further, I did not represent myself as his "friend" (but I did say, correctly, that I had met him and had communicated with him by e-mail). I don't recall ever mentioning talking to her on-list -- if I did it was probably in the context of a thread at the time that mentioned "Andrew's cats". How this made him "look bad" or was an attempt to create "dissension" in their marriage is quite beyond me and indeed is quite absurd.
(c) he didn't write that I engaged in a "diatribe" against Fred's use of a "levels of abstraction" dodge while later, when called on this, admitting that it was not a diatribe; and
JL: This is genuinely stupid! (Yes, AK, you can now write that I said that you made a "stupid" charge). I pointed out on-list previously that what I called "diatribe" was better labelled "dismissive comments". Is there anyone who actually believes this nonsense about how this was part of a "campaign of personal vilification..."?
(d) he has not tried to ridicule my concern for empirical evidence.
JL: Can you believe this ??? He writes that I have NOT tried to ridicule his oncern for empirical evidence and this is now supposed to be justification for the absurd claim that I engaged in "personal vilification" !!!
Jerry wrote: "In solidarity"
With whom?
JL: Before a few days ago, I would have said "To everyone on this list".
Yet, it is hard for me to offer solidarity to someone who:
a) threatened me in public;
b) called me "the enemy"
c) accuses me of nonsense, bordering on LIBEL, in statements like the above.
Nonetheless, for the benefit of the rest of the list, and in the optimistic hope that Kliman will recognize the absurdity of his charges, I will end:
In solidarity, Jerry
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