Re: [OPE] Are Regulation Theorists Marxists?

Ian Wright wrote:
> Then I'd argue that they should not be classified as Marxist
> economists. I think this is important. The "core" of Marxist economics
> is the LTV.

My own limited experience on this problem is that there are genuinely
Marxist-inspired economists who fit into two main 'camps': accumulation
process and class struggle. In both camps, there are comrades who use
LTV and those who don't find it necessary or useful. (My bias: trained
by David Harvey I find myself using LTV as a powerful grounding and am
generally accused, correctly, of doing accumulation process much more
than class struggle analysis.)

I think all these comrades have the right to call themselves Marxist if
they view capitalism in class terms, beset by internal contradictions
and crisis tendencies, with much of the associated analysis - but let's
not split too mnay hairs over whether LTV is foundational here or
there... for we have way too much work to do uniting comrades on even
more urgent matters, such as whether there has been a capitalist crisis
unfolding for the last three decades (the line many accumulation-process
Marxists would adopt), or whether the last two years has merely been a
financial crisis interrupting an otherwise boom period for capital (the
position of some leading class-struggle Marxists).
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Received on Wed Aug 19 13:43:31 2009