Paul Z wrote: > >Grossman pulls a similar operation against Sismondi. In 1924 he is quite >appreciative of Sismondi (a French original article appearing in Warsaw), >while in 1934 his tune is completely different regarding Sismondi (he must >have read Lenin's views on Sismondi in the meantime since now his remarks >are indisquishable from Lenin's). Paul, you have obviously not read grossman's 1934 entry on Sismondi for the Encylopaedia of the Social Sciences in a long time! A more appreciative note to a man whom he credits as the founder of theories of capitalist dynamics I cannot imagine. Yes he takes issue with his underconsumptionism (while noting that Malthus and Robertus and later many Marxists took from him), but praises him for his devastating attacks on the abstractions of classical economics; moreover, he finds much with which to agree in sismondi's understanding of disproportionality crises, which are inherent not as a result of failure to anticipate demand correctly in the respective branches but as a result of the unevenness of technical change. Paul Z, to imply that Grossmann refused to write in praise of sismondi as a result of lenin's negative views is simply wrong. And the praise of Sismondi reaches new heights in his 1943 piece for the Journal of Political economy. Now Sismondi is a theoretical historian of the first rank! You also wrote: >The article is a 1941 manuscript (*Capital and Class* doesn't tell you >where it comes from), first published in 1969 in German original. > >The very first sentence is the type I find annoying in Grossman: > >"The dominant view of Marx is to regard him as a student of and successor >to the Classical economists; as an economist who 'completed' that work". > >He then footnotes a pretty long list of culprits of whom LENIN IS NOT >LISTED. Yet Lenin's (1913) "three sources" of Marxism article has the >passage > >"Adam Smith and David Ricardo, by their investigations of the economic >system, laid the foundations of the labor theory of value. Marx continued >their work; he provided a proof of the theory and developed it >consistently. He showed that the value of every commodity is determined by >the quantity of socially necessary labor time spent on its production." that grossman held his tongue for reasons of party discipline is indeed possible and likely. but grossmann was by nature (it seems) a choleric guy, and he does not spare lenin rapier like criticism in law of accumulation and the breakdown (catastrophe) of the capitalist system (1929). Grossmann was not impressed with Lenin's work as a piece of theoretical reasoning, and he did not try to hide this from anyone. And I think this says more about Grossman's scientific integrity than whether he included Lenin's name in an obscure footnote. However, it seems obvious that Grossmann argued that Lenin was closer to Marx's theory than Luxemburg and Sternberg were with their underconsumptionism. Even as profound a critic of Lenin as Mattick Sr grants that Lenin did more to preserve the revolutionary core of Marx's critique of political economy than other 2nd Intl thinkers. Paul Z, I know we disagree about this harsh treatment of Luxemburg, but I don't think it was motivated by politics as much as by Rosa L's incomprehension according to Grossmann of the nature and implications of Marx's theory, esp. the reproduction schemes. At any rate, I find little positive reference to Lenin in Grossman's writings but as Rick Kuhn has demonstrated grossman's theoretical work was shaped by the organizational work that he did with the working class. So it is possible that for party reasons Grossmann did not always name Lenin when attacking positions that Lenin, along with others, held. It would be interesting to get Rick Kuhn's views on this. especially his comparative analysis of their respective ideas of the party. moreover, we would need to make a careful study of lenin's work to determine whether he did not understand the differences between the marxian and classical labor theory of value. there is the controversial criticism by mattick sr, korsch and pannekoek that lenin criticized machian idealism from the perspective of bourgeois materialism, not historical materialism. Did Lenin criticize the subjective turn in bourgeois economics from the perspective of the classical labor theory, not the Marxian theory? I don't know. It would seem the more interesting question is whether Bukharin on whom I would imagine Lenin was dependent here grasped the differences between the classical theory of labor value and the marxian labor theory of value. And I would say that there are some very important places where bukharin lays out the differences in the two labor theories of value. Which is not to say that there are not devastating criticisms to be made of bukharin's methodology for the study of bourgeois ideology (geoffrey kay has written one such criticism, if i remember). moreover, lenin did refer (i have read in secondary sources) in his hegel notebooks to the contradictions of the commodity which contained within itself the contradictions of the system as a whole. i don't believe that this could have been known to grossmann, however. But it suggests that Lenin's understanding of the commodity may have been at a higher level than Ricardo. > >In my opinion, Grossman is a tricky fellow and many times one has to pay as >much attention to the silences as to the opinions (e.g., anti-Luxemburgism) >to get a fuller understanding of what he is up to. And do not forget that Grossmann praises Luxemburg for defending the revolutionary core of marxism against revisionists. In a sense, his greatest praise in his magnum opus is for her. Rakesh
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