From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Mon Sep 10 2007 - 17:03:32 EDT
David Laibman wrote: "But Bortkiewicz was a crotchety anti-Marx writer who thought he had stuck it to Marx. The TSS-ers take this much too seriously." As far as I am aware, von Bortkiewicz did not really aim to show Marx's theory was wrong, but to use mathematical insight to understand and reveal the implications of the theory more rigorously, making it more consistent, and solving logical problems it raised (not just with regard to the transformation problem). Thus, Paul Sweezy called Bortkiewicz's modelling the "final vindication of the labor theory of value" as Kliman notes in his book (p. 46). My understanding is that what the TSSI school battles with, is the idea held by many economists that von Bortkiewicz exposed a fatal flaw in Marx's theory, in fact rendering the theory incoherent, with the implication that it should be rejected. Marx failed to transform inputs because it was logically impossible to do so. The idea then is, that with just two basic propositions (input and output prices can differ, and values and prices are determined interdependently) everything falls into place and that the theory can then be made completely consistent (although I agree with some of the arguments, I think that cannot be true, but I would need to prepare a whole book to explain systematically my own interpretation of the theory itself and its criticism, which I simply don't have the time for to do now - I am not even a professional economist - as already I mentioned, I don't think "all profits are due to surplus labour", but that's just for starters). David argues that "If everything is changing, nothing can be theorized" but surely that is not true. We cannot even recognize any change, without constants - if "you cannot step into the same river twice" that doesn't mean that there is an infinite number of different rivers, for example (other than in a new age fantasy). It is quite possible to theorise a process of change, in terms of constants and variables. David is on stronger ground when he argues that you cannot understand disequilibrium or non-equilibrium without reference to equilibrium. But there is - heavily truncating, sorry to say - yet at least another possible position, admittedly difficult to accept for an economist: the dispute about equilibrium or non-equilibrium in Marx's theory is really a "non-problem", i.e. it exists only if we abstract from the object of study some essential characteristics that make it what it is. In that case, setting up a debate between equilibrium and non-equilibrium economics is barking up the wrong tree. Jurriaan
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