From: GERALD LEVY (gerald_a_levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Wed Nov 07 2007 - 08:01:19 EST
Hi Anders: >>If no one thought that it was relevant, then why was >>there so much time and effort allocated to answering it? >Because of the immense political effect. This is why the debate in >what kind of paradigm you can say that Marx was inconsistent, forgot >to correct the input prices, that profit rates cannot fall when there is >increased productivity etc. etc. There was NO "immense political effect", Anders. This was the case both after Bohm-Bawerk issued his critique and the Sraffa-inspired critique of the late 20th Century. I know of no radical who rejected Marxism because of the TP or a critique of the TRPF. Do you? The effect - to the extent that there has been - has been among economists and students of economics. Certainly, the charge of inconsistency never became an issue in any mass struggle. If one goes back and actually reads Okishio, he presented no awful (at least for Marxists) political conclusion. His 1961 article "Technical Change and the Rate of Profit" concluded simply: "..capitalistic classes can raise the rate of profit, if labourers fail to get an increase of wages. Thus the movement of the rate of profit is determined by the struggle between conclicting classes". Admittedly, he did write that the barrier to capital is capital itself but rather emphasized that there is a relation between the rate of profit and class struggle. This is hardly a terrible political or theoretical position and I think it has some basis in what Marx actually wrote. > My hunch is that if he had been >satisfied with his own solutions to the transformation problem >problems - he would have published Capital III himself. I know of no evidence to that effect or even that a solution to what has come to be called the TP was a major concern of Marx. >From Howard and King, A history of Marxian Economics, >Vol. 1, chap. 2 it emerges - IMO - that Marx and Engels was well >aware of the transformation problem, but none of them were able to >formulate a *completely* satisfying solution - otherwise this would >not still have been a problem - so many eager and bright minds have >studied this problem - The "Prize Essay Competition" showed that this was a concern of Engels, not Marx. And, in any event (as I recall the competition, as summarized by H & K) it was basically a challenge for others to give their guess as to what Marx's answer was. I.e. the person who first explained what Marx's answer was would win the competition. Thus, clearly, Engels believed that the answer to the challenge was found in Volume III itself. In other words, that Marx had himself arrived at a fully satisfactory answer. So, clearly he thought that the controversy would be settled (post-humously) by Marx. >and so far - before TSS - the result have >been - that either you reject or ignore Marx' value theory - or you >are stuck with the transformation problem. No. That has not been the conclusion of all contributions to that debate before TSS. You might not be satidfied with some of those "solutions" but they did not all require that "you reject or ignore Marx's value theory". Did Foley and Levy/Dumenil, for instance, reject or ignore Marx's value theory? >Like the TSSI I am convinced that Marx was not simultaneist, he was a >profoundly dynamic, dialectic thinker, but his use of "long-run >equilib. models has shaped the subsequent debate. That's why I am >much less condemning of those who have not yet seen the TSSI-light. The transformation problem then really becomes transformed into the following: How can a level of Marx's analysis in which comparative statics (i.e. period analysis) was employed be transformed at a more concrete level of abstraction into a truly and completely dynamic model? This is a worthwhile question to ask, but it is one that requires that those who seek the answers move beyond merely interpreting Marx's theory. In solidarity, Jerry
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