From: Paul Zarembka (zarembka@BUFFALO.EDU)
Date: Fri Mar 25 2005 - 10:50:56 EST
--On Friday, March 25, 2005 8:24 AM -0500 Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM wrote: > Morishima's writings on Marx seemed to have been welcomed > at the time that they were first published by many Marxians. Perhaps > one explanation for that was that in the context of the period _any_ > sympathetic critique of Marx whether it was written by Morishima > or someone like William J. Baumol was welcomed ... by some. > (I am recalling the reception to which Baumol's reply to Samuelson > in the _Journal of Economic Literature_ received.) In the March of 1974, we at SUNY Buffalo held a conference on the Cambridge capital controversy, subsequently published by North-Holland. Morishima was there as well as people like Samuelson and Solow. Morishima said in his lecture at least twice, "Marx is great!". I always remember that affirmation and call to take Marx seriously. His work is consistent with that statement. At the time, I believe Japanese economics departments were often 50-50 neoclasscial/marxist (more or less). Partly this was a product of much deepter study of Marx in Japan than in the U.S. in the 20s and 30s, including knowledge there of the German language. One of Japan's most famous novelists is still the marxist Takiji Kobayashi: "Encyclopędia Britannica Article born Oct. 13, 1903, Shimo Kawazoe, Japan died [murdered! P.Z.] Feb. 20, 1933, Tokyo outstanding writer of the proletarian literary movement in pre-World War II Japan. Kobayashi attended Otaru (Hokkaido) Higher Commercial School, where he showed literary promise. On graduation in 1924 he took a position with a bank in Otaru, while his interest in literature grew...." In other words, Morishima is truly a product of Japanese history. Morishima said at the conference that an examination of Marx's own income indicated that he did not really live impoverished. I do not know his source for that statement, maybe it was his own examination. Does anyone know about this? Paul *********************************************************************** RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, Paul Zarembka, editor, Elsevier Science ******************** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka
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