From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Wed Jul 11 2007 - 17:00:45 EDT
I am not worried if I find that Marx's two identities (between total profits and total surplus value and between total production prices and total values) cannot hold, because in a dialectical theory dealing with a moving process, they are only simplifying abstractions anyway. Plus, if Marx is correct, value relations exist irrespective of whether they are expressed by prices or not, since human beings produce and maintain their products with their work. The question is what the theory can explain and predict, and what conditions would need to be satisfied for it to be at all realistic. It may explain a lot, or very little (because pitched at a very high level of abstraction). Marx and Engels themselves explicitly denied that the two identities would apply in reality, at most they thought the discrepancies would not be so great. You are at a far higher level of economic theory than I am, have a much better grasp of the literature, hence my reference to "dummies". My own thinking and study about all this got derailed at the critical point, life became a tragic mess, and I did not delve deeply into the mathematics of it, as I originally wanted. But anyway I think mathematical equations cannot substitute for conceptual precision in the definition of measuring units; they only reveal the logical and quantitative implications of concepts and measurement units. The important thing here is to be clear about what you think has to be explained, what you need to explain. I think here we probably differ somewhat. There are oodles of mathematical proofs that Marx is wrong, but they typically do not do much justice to the problems he tried to solve or the concepts he used to solve them. The real questions are whether: 1) it is possible to develop Marx's unfinished theory further in a coherent way, or not 2) we need to adopt parts of Marx's theory and reject others 3) we need a completely new theory to satisfy Marx's explanatory goals in modern setting I think you reject 1), you accept 2) and think that 3) is an open question. I am a bit of a "waverer" at this point, as I have tended to move from thinking 1), then 2) and then 3) but then moving back again the other way. I think I would need an amount of research time equal to the years I lost out of my productive intellectual life due to personal crises to solve that satisfactorily, but I may not be so lucky. How much control over one's life can one have, in these uncertain times? Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans, and you have to meet your personal needs somehow. A dangerous thing to say, if you believe in the benefits of planned economy, but true in some sense. Well maybe I should make some "Other plans". Jurriaan
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