From: gerald_a_levy (gerald_a_levy@msn.com)
Date: Thu Mar 13 2003 - 10:59:04 EST
Re Rakesh's [8589]: > > In that > > discussion, Fred cited evidence from Marx contra the > > Kliman-McGlone treatment of PoP in their transformation article. > > Don't you remember what came to be called the "smoking gun > > quotation" cited by Fred from Volume 3 about there being "only > > two reasons" for a change of PoP (see 4908 from February, > > 2001)? > Yes, and do not forget how Allin drew on the Keynesian idea of > lagged adjustment to make sense of Andrew's ideas. Keynesian ideas about lagged adjustment can't make sense out of the K-M interpretation because -- as K-M repeatedly emphasized -- they were advancing an interpretation of Marx, i.e. the K-M article was an exercise in (their term) 'hermeneutics'. Thus, _even if _ Keynesian ideas could be used to explain aspects of the real-world dynamic process, it can't be claimed that that was Marx's perspective on PoP *unless* one can prove that the Keynesian concept was anticipated by Marx *and* applied in the context of his theory of PoP -- something I have seen *no* evidence for. Had K-M claimed that they were 'improving' or 'modifying' or 'advancing' or 'extending' or 'correcting' Marx's theory, then the terms of the debate would have been quite different. One also has to recall that the K-M article explicitly claimed that "abstracting from the process of competition, we will show no market price oscillations" (see Fred's 4924). No changes in market prices -- yet, if I am hearing you correctly, you are claiming something quite different, i.e. with continuous technical change there are ongoing and inter-periodic changes in the productivity of labor and market prices. This perspective (i.e. your perspective) is worth considering, but it can not be conflated with the K-M perspective on Marx's theory of PoP. Also, the explicit ruling out of market price oscillations by K-M rules out the Keynesian lagged adjustment mechanism that Allin proposed. In solidarity, Jerry
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