From: Anders Ekeland (anders.ekeland@ONLINE.NO)
Date: Wed Oct 24 2007 - 14:17:40 EDT
Hi Jerry, as I have said before, just now I do not have time to follow up this properly, so again very briefly: Do you think there is a "Whiggish >foundation" to basically all non-TSSI radical perspectives in political >economy? Yes, in the sense that gen.eq - uniform profit rates, M-prices must be equal to M'-prices, is seen as the only rigorous framework, the only one that can produce analytical (interesting results). To take a parallel - there is in my opinion an unresolved contradiction in Schumpeter's works between an admiration of Walras - and all the insights Schumpeter has regarding competition, creative destruction, innovation etc. If you judge Schumpeter with GE as the theoretical standard - he is not only a minor neo-Ricardian, he is just verbal and non-rigorous. >Do you think that it is a foundational question for Marxian and >Sraffian economics to (your words) "judge him (Marx) from a gen eq. point >of view"? Yes. >Since all but a handful of Marxians (in the Analytical and >Rational Choice Marxism traditions) explicitly reject general equilibrium >theory, this is a bit far-fetched, imo. Why far fetched? The whole Bortkiewicz, Sweezy, Sraffa inspired linear algebra is simultaneous, GE modelling, so if these people as a credo reject GE - all their models and thinking and what they regard as "results" are from GE models. Deeds count - not words. One litmus test on this is their view on monopoly (in reality a dominant position) - do they buy the neo-classical result that monopoly means "less produced to a higher price" - then their rejection of GE is of very little value. In reality the opposite is the truth - IKEA gives you more furniture to a much lower price, IBM give you more computing to a lower price. Se my paper to the 2006 AHE conference: "The text-book myth of the monopoly case" for a more detailed discussion of this neo-classical myth. Regards Anders
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