Re: (OPE-L) Luxemburg's Intro to P.E. in English

From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Sun Nov 21 2004 - 20:33:21 EST


Riccardo wrote:

>
>I am not putting together shool of thought: I am trying to insert
>topics which were raised by Schumpeter, or Keynes,

Do you think Rosa Luxemburg would have been interested in improving
Marx with the ideas of those who defended or tried to save bourgeois
society? This is what I mean by abusing the spirit of Luxemburg.
There is nothing in the Progress and Stagnation piece that suggests
this is the kind of thing RL had in mind in developing an open
Marxism.


>  or even Sraffa, in
>a Marxian framework.

or looked at the economy as a black box input output scheme


>  That is, first, from within (development of the
>Marxian legacy) and second I do not deny that points in Marx were
>wrong or that important points were discovered by Schumpeter, or
>Keynes, or others.

Credit and innovation were discovered by Schumpeter? I think not.
Luxemburg argues that Marx discoverd the endogeneity of credit, no
(and Claus' recent post shows brilliantly how complex Marx's ideas
about money really were)? As Grossmann argued in his review of
Business Cycles, Schumpeter's category of Innovation is best
understood as a materialization of JS Mill's countertendencies to
falling profitability; Or technology induced real business cycles?
What then of Sismondi? Schumpeter was original in trying to theorize
all this from within a general equilibrium framework. And this lead
him to believe in the long term stability of the capitalist economy
as long as there was not the political intervention that was, he
fantastically believed, the cause of the instability he thought
impossible.   Did Keynes discover effective demand? No as Cogoy
points out Marx did in the reproduction schema.

Did Marx make mistakes? Yes. Perhaps primarily those of the kind of
not clearly demarcating his epistemological break (the Ricardo for
example that remains in his theory of value as a result of common
terminology, as Geert Reuten may argue). And he certainly made
political errors--see Mehring's criticism of how he handled Lasalle
and Bakunin. And did he leave many problems unaddressed, including
those that arose after his death? Of course.


>
>That is, I could put it this way. Would you say Marx was putting
>together Smith and Ricardo? Me no: but he praises the former or the
>latter. They were object of critique (not criticism: it
>incoiprporates and reformulate the truths of Smith and Ricardo). I
>think that there has been a political economy after Ricardo until
>today,

Marx was quite skeptical of scientific political economy after the
1830s; the only important exception he seems to have made is Richard
Jones who was of course an uncompromising anti Ricardian. Something
that those who try to assimilate Marx to Ricardo should not forget.

Yours, Rakesh


>  and our duty is to make a critique of the political economy of
>today. This is definitely not putting together.
>
>riccardo
>--
>Riccardo Bellofiore
>Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche
>"Hyman P. Minsky"
>Via dei Caniana 2
>I-24127 Bergamo, Italy
>e-mail:   riccardo.bellofiore@unibg.it
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