On Fri, 24 May 2002, Rakesh wrote: > For what is TSS saying? It seems to me that they are asking that > Marxist use some tools other than standard Samuelson-Sraffian i/o > analysis such as difference equations and dynamic models. So TSS > thinks that Marx can be formalized in a dynamic model with money. Well, we don't have the benefit of TSS people speaking for themselves, but my objection (or part of it) is that the dynamics (the 'T' in TSS) are pseudo-dynamics. For example, take the equalization of the rate of profit between sectors (or industries or firms, whatever). Some people (Dumenil and Levy, Steedman) have investigated the dynamics of how a uniform rate of profit might be formed, starting from a dispersed set of profit rates. They have posed (and attempted to answer) the question of whether or not this process is likely to converge. So far as I know, this sort of issue is entirely absent from TSS models (or "examples" -- I think they don't like to talk of "models"). Typical exercises from Andrew Kliman and Alan Freeman simply assume a rate of profit that is somehow "already" equalized each period. As I have argued at length here some time ago, it seems to me that TSS "temporal sequences" are in fact mappings onto imaginary time of the iterative solution to a set of simultaneous equations. Further, you mention a "dynamic model _with money_". It's not my impression that TSS people take money seriously. In this respect, though, they are not much different from most Marxists. I'm with Riccardo in thinking that Marxists have something to learn from Keynesians (or post-Keynesians) in this regard. Allin Cottrell.
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