From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Sat Oct 20 2007 - 13:57:33 EDT
> We do not need a consensus condemning Kliman and Freeman, if they > were that hopeles then we could just leave them alone. The point is - > as Jerry's post proves - they are stimulating discussion and should > get some credit for that even if one disagrees on major or minor points. Hi Anders: I was half expecting you to reply and am happy that you did. As for your suggestion that K & F have stimulated discussion, for which they should receive credit, I have a different take on that question based on a different rememberance of the circumstances that led to the over-abundance of discussion (in various forums, in print, in person at conferences, and online) on the TSSI. Here's the way I remember what happened. Various advocates of what became known as the TSSI wrote papers on Marx and were then disgruntled by what appeared to them to be the lack of responses to those papers. Freeman and Kliman then founded the International Working Group on Value Theory (IWGVT) as a forum not merely to discuss value theory in general, but _their_ perspectives in particular. Those who presented papers at the IWGVT were confronted (sometimes bullied) by the organizers who asked them for responses to the TSSI. In many cases this worked: i.e. presenters were "guilt tripped" and/or harassed into writing papers on the TSSI to satisfy this demand and in appreciation of the efforts of the conference organizers to secure a venue for the discussion of value theory. (These mini-conferences later degenerated and disappeared, but that's another -- albeit, related -- story). Back when OPE-L was founded in the Fall of 1995 they again claimed that their perspectives were being ignored. They suggested -- without putting forward a shred of evidence -- that their perspectives were being "suppressed" by Marxian economists and journals. You can go to our archives to see how others responded. Basically, everyone else from _all_ perspectives said that they _also_ were waiting for responses to what they had written. In other words, what Freeman and Kliman claimed was "suppression" was experienced -- not as suppression, but as the norm -- by everyone else. So, basically what happened -- the way I remember it -- was that K & F cried and protested about how their perspectives were being ignored and it was *that* which led to the large amount of articles written since about the TSSI. In other words, the response was _not_ caused by a belief that _in any way_ the TSSI "contribution" was somehow intrinsically important. Basically, people just felt sorry for them and wrote critiques so that they wouldn't continue to cry about how their perspectives were ignored. Yet, how else could all of that time and intellectual energy have been spent? What _other_ stimulating and pressing questions could have been discussed without this extended engagement with this small TSSI grouping? Frankly, I think the period from the early 1990's to the current period will be remembered in the history of Marxian thought as *THE GREAT DETOUR*. At a crucial time in world history, it will be remembered that Marxian economists wasted a huge amount of their time discussing insignificant Marxological questions which were divorced from understanding the way capitalism actually works and struggles against that system. It wasn't exactly a complete waste of time, but there were far better ways for Marxists to spend their time. Do Freeman and Kliman deserve "credit" for that? Well, in a way. "Credit" or "blame" - it's the same thing. Have they been "stimulating"? Their form of "stimulation" we can do without, imo -- just as we can do without tick bites as a form of stimulation. In solidarity, Jerry PS: I wasn't proposing a "vote", Anders. It just seems to me that after 12-15 years of debating these topics, people should begin to state clearly what just about all of us agree on. And then move on.
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