From: A.B.Trigg (A.B.Trigg@OPEN.AC.UK)
Date: Mon Mar 01 2004 - 17:27:43 EST
Jerry. Your insights inot the Grossmanite influence on the LTRPF are illuminating. I think you are also right that the claim that all its proponents implicitly assume Say's Law is rather wild. My weaker point was that maybe they move to the LTRPF too quickly, and the complexity of technological change and prices deviating from values If Marx's method were followed correctly then they would stop off for longer in Volume II of Capital for Marx's attack of Say's Law and the capitalist nexus, before getting lost in the high seas of Volume III. Andrew. -----Original Message----- From: Gerald A. Levy [mailto:Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM] Sent: Thu 26/02/2004 16:25 To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU Cc: Subject: (OPE-L) RE: Say's Law in Marxian Theories? Hi again Andrew. >> 1. It could be argued that all proponents of the falling rate of profit, when they use Marx's reproduction schema, implicitly assume Say's Law. <<< The "use" of the reproduction schema was rather limited and tied to the specific form that that the accumulation debates happened in German Social Democracy. The article by Rosenthal singles out Anwar [Shaikh] as being a "Grossmanite", but there are really quite a large number of authors who are or were "proponents" of the LTRPF, including Mattick, Altvater, Rosdolsky and Mandel (although the latter had more of a multi-causal theory of crisis which included the LTRPF and the counter-acting factors, but had other elements as well). In the 1970's, authors such as Mario Cogoy, Georgios Stamatis, and OPE-Ler David Yaffe could be seen as being part of the intellectual tradition which was influenced by Grossmann. Paolo Giussani and OPE-Lers Fred M and John E (both of whom studied with Mattick, Sr.), among others, are contemporaries who are part of this tradition. I think it would be _very_ hard to support the proposition that all of these authors implicitly assumed Say's Law. It should also be noted that some works which even Rosenthal couldn't claim as being "Grossmanite", such as Fine and Harris (1979) and Reuten and Williams (1989), have a major _place_ for the LTRPF. It would be difficult indeed to make the case that all of these theories also implicitly assume Say's Law. >>> 2. My second question is can all proponents of the falling rate of profit thesis be placed in a clear Grossmanite lineage? Before Grossmann the falling rate of profit was very marginal to Marxist economics; so if Grossmann implicitly assumes Say's Law then the point can be generalized to much of Marxist economics. I don't have enough knowledge of the history of Marxist economics to back this up, but it is to some extent argued by Howard and King. <<< It does seem to be the case that before Grossmann the LTRPF (and the CFs) were not identified by most Marxist authors as being central to Marx's theory of crisis. To see how this was the case for the prominent Bolsheviks and their Social-Democratic contemporaries, see Richard B. Day (1981) _The 'Crisis' and the 'Crash'_ (London, NLB). The timing of the translation of Volume III into other languages, including Russian, may be relevant for explaining the extent to which theories emphasized Volume II topics rather than also including Volume III subjects, including the LTRPF. In solidarity, Jerry
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