From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Thu Nov 18 2004 - 12:46:17 EST
At 6:29 PM +0100 11/18/04, Riccardo Bellofiore wrote: >At 8:47 -0800 18-11-2004, Rakesh Bhandari wrote: > >>Her economic theory was developed in such a way as to have political >>implications that she repudiated. For example, Robinson's confidence >>in state management of effective demand to stabilize capitalism. > >your picture of Robinson is wrong. You can go and read the Second >Crisis in Economic Theory. there is a difference between economic limits and political limits to stabilization. Luxemburg would have insisted on both; Robinson (as well as Sweezy) on the latter. I have argued several times that Kaleckian problems with full employment can be overcome through corporatism, ie it is in theory possible to stabilize capitalism at full employment. RL would have resisted such a conclusion. In fact she did. >Anyhow, the point is irrelevant: Robinson >never attributed her approach to Luxemburg. Simply spotted the >problem of the inducement to invest, that others did'n see. Who didn't see the problem of the inducement to invest? Why had the inducement weakened? A subjective or objective explanation? Both Keynes and Kalecki point to the overwhelming importance of a previous drop in profitability in weakening the inducement to invest, but neither has an explanation for that. > >> >>> >>>The only thing on which she surely would agree 100% would be the need >>>to approach Marx (also) in a critical fashion - just go and read the >>>Accumulation of Capital and the Anti-critique. She of course thinks >>>that in this way she reinstates the true Marxian position (as I am >>>thinking I am doing exactly the same with my reconstruction). >> >>Critical so that the theory and revolutionary praxis of the working >>class are intertwined. Not theory so that the possibility of the >>technocrat state as savior is opened up. > >Who denied this? If you attribute this to Robinson, it is a >declaration of ignorance of her position. Perhaps but Frank Roosevelt did show in Cambridge Economics as Commodity Fetishism that her vision of socialism was technocratic. > >>> >>>Thanks for the post on Crotty. >> >>Comments? > >No. Because I am trying to produce something for the conference, and >in the middle I am closing other 4-5 works. I had health problems >after summer, and I am not 100% I am sorry. >OK, so I am avoiding to indulge too >much in distractions. Maybe in a while. > >> >>> >>>Yo may be interested in RL's chapter Stagnation and Progress in >>>Marxism in Riazanov ed, Karl Marx. Man Thinker and Revolutionist. >>>Martin Lawrence Lt., 1928. >> >>Yes I have not read it. Thanks. > >It is on the web, in the marxist.org. You would not believe but I >agree, say, 85% ... > >I am re-reading the Anti-critique, which is so much powerful than the >Accumulation of Capital. It is a pity that in English they are >published separately (In Italian, they are in the same book, with an >intro by Sweezy). The errors are there, but so it is the stress on >the macro nature of Marx's economic theory, the picture of the >monetary circuit, the problem of the inducement to invest, the >relation between extraction of surplus value and the insufficiency of >demand. How is the insufficiency of demand explained? >IMHO. >-- >Riccardo Bellofiore >Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche >"Hyman P. Minsky" >Via dei Caniana 2 >I-24127 Bergamo, Italy >e-mail: riccardo.bellofiore@unibg.it >direct +39-035-2052545 >secretary +39-035 2052501 >fax: +39 035 2052549 >homepage: http://www.unibg.it/dse/homepage/bellofiore.htm
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