From: Anders Ekeland (anders.ekeland@ONLINE.NO)
Date: Wed Jun 28 2006 - 02:07:00 EDT
Hi Jurriaan, The problem - which is a general one - is that as soon as you leave the static equilibrium as the object of study, i.e. comparing the concept of surplus in a Sraffian (always static) and a "Marxian" static concept of surplus, you get into trouble - as the discussion since the publication of first Vol. of Das Kapital has shown. (Even before Böhm-Bawerk, Bortkiewicz et al.) Either you end up comparing Sraffa with some inconsistent Marx - as f.ex. Steedman does with great elegance and rigour - or you end up comparing one possible interpretation of Sraffa with another one, one of them you call Marx. This might be an interesting exercise for some purposes and in any case you learn that the insights of Marx - which has inspired not only (dynamic) Marxist economists but also economists like Schumpeter and Baumol - these insights be studied using the method of comparing static equilibria. My basic point is that we have almost not started to explore the dynamic, real Marx. Not the least because as soon as you leave the world of "perfect stagnation" (called perfect competition or equilibrium among economists" the possibilities you have to specify the *dynamic* mechanisms on how prices and technologies are determined are - to quote Haavelmo - "endless", i.e. they cannot be decided on mathematical grounds alone. You need theories of dynamic market behavior, of expectations of learning etc. etc. And as Haavelmo also points out: you cannot treat the dynamics as a mere appendix to the static solution, you cannot "claim that the solution of the general equilibrium model shows what will actually happen in a freely competitive market system.” No smart mathematical tricks will do. And as you point out yourself, the "solutions" of Dumenil, Foley, Lipietz and others are "informed by a value theory which in some respects is quite alien to Marx". And Dumenil, Foley et al. are sympathetic to Marx dynamic insights, they just had to "save" Marx in a static framework - and they were not really successful. Neither the static or the dynamic economists were satisfied with their "solution". Because these linear algebraic models cannot - AFAIK - have increasing returns to scale, have multiple production processes, i.e. handicraft shoes and industrial made shoes in the same model, they cannot have "wasted labour", i.e. hours of working time that are socially wasted, i.e. get a much less paid than other hours of labour which are technically just the same (overproduction crisis) etc. etc. etc. Again the limitations of a static framework to "show what will actually happen in a freely competitive market system" reveals themselves brutally. Again: why it is interesting to look for "a reference to a specific analytical discussion of Sraffian vs Marxian concepts of surplus" - as long as there is no explicit formulation of Marxian surplus in a dynamic framework? Regards Anders
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