Re Andrew B's [5802]: > Rather, I am using the importance of 'value' > as the key aspect guiding my judgment as to the > true reason and motivation for the value > debates. In turn this relies on a materialist > premise: what people worry about most relates > to their material circumstances, the most > important of which is 'value' in the CMP. "What people worry about"? Which people? I will offer a contrary hypothesis which links the debates on the TP, the Okishio Theorem, etc. to material reality. What is the 'material reality' of most of the participants in that debate? At least since the 1940s, they have overwhelmingly been part of the material reality of the academy. And the participants desire job security and advancement in their [tenuous] positions in colleges and universities. Thus, when there are those in the academy who have lampooned their perspective(s) on value, an attempt to answer those critiques has some importance if one wants to be 'taken seriously' by one's colleagues (overwhelmingly neo-neo-classical economists) and graduate students. Thus, the debate has been motivated -- at least on one side -- by the pursuit of 'respectability' at work? Yet, since when do Marxists want to be viewed by representatives of bourgeois ideology (the marginalists, etc.) as 'respectable'? "Respectability" should be a "dirty word" for Marxists. Significantly, while your hypothesis rests on what people worry about in capitalist society and the crucially important role of value, my counter- hypothesis seeks to explain why _particular people_ [Marxist academic economists] have a vested concern about the outcome of those debates. And, at least I can point to what many of the participants themselves have cited for the reason for their engagement (and, indeed, we have heard these motivations cited repeatedly on OPE-L.). I also point out the following: who knows about and cares about the 'transformation problem' and the Okishio Theorem, etc.? How many workers in a thousand would you guess know about those issues and debates? I suspect that the answer is 'less than 1 in 1,000'. This is thus a debate which from its very conception has not been rooted in the material conditions of the working class and the changing nature of capitalist society. It has, indeed, not been a debate _by_ the working class. It has been a debate _among_ economists. The presumption has been that Marxists must answer to bourgeois [and non-bourgeois non-Marxist] economists. Yet, shouldn't Marxists answer only to the working class? In solidarity, Jerry
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