Yes, I agree that there are differences between Marx and Ricardo--as there are differences between Smith and Ricardo, or between Hicks and Marshall. This doesn't negate my point that Marx was building upon Ricardo's work, partly by criticising it, partly by developing insights he accepted as valid, and that Marx understood his project in these terms. Paul Z. had argued that this reading is in some sense retrogressive. Gary >===== Original Message From "Smith, David Norman" <emerald@ku.edu> ===== >Actually, in his 1879 notes on Wagner, Marx cites Sieber as a source of >insight into the DIFFERENCE between Marx's views and Ricardo's: "Mr. Wagner >could have acquainted himself with the difference between Ricardo and me not >only from CAPITAL but (if he knew Russian) from Sieber's work..." > >About the vexed question of Marx & Ricardo more generally: Though there are >plainly many other dimensions to this vexed question that merit attention, >it's hard to gainsay the significance of Marx's difference from Ricardo over >the very DEFINITION of value. As Marx writes in Capital, the "springpunkt" >of his own originality vis-à-vis value is that he construes value as >abstract labor; whereas, for Ricardo and Smith, among many others, value is >conceived as labor pure and simple. "Ricardo's investigations are concerned >exclusively with the MAGNITUDE OF VALUE," as Marx writes in Zur Kritik der >politischen Ökonomie (1859) -- not, that is, with the SUBSTANCE of value. >"For the rest," he continues, "the bourgeois form of labour is regarded by >Ricardo as the eternal natural form of social labour." (See the Progress >Publishers edition, Ryazanskaya translation, 1970, p. 60). > >These, I'd say, are pretty fundamental differences. > >David Smith > >-----Original Message----- >From: mongiovg >To: ope-l; Paul Zarembka >Cc: David Smith; James White >Sent: 1/31/02 12:46 PM >Subject: RE: [OPE-L:6473] Re: N. Sieber on Ricardo and Marx > >Doesn't Marx, in his Afterward to the Second German Edition of Capital, more >or less endorse Sieber's view of the connection between Marx and Ricardo? >However slippery Marx's grasp of Russian may have been, he understands >Sieber to have posited a continuity between Marx and Ricardo, and in >referring to Sieber Marx's tone is unambiguously approving. I have been >criticized for overstating the affinity of Marx and Ricardo, and I take the >point. But surely it is a mistake to deny that there was a substantial >continuity esp. in light of Marx's own acknowledgment of it? > >Gary
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