Re Andrew K's [OPE-L:4880]: > In reply to Paul Bullock's OPE-L 4876. <snip, JL> > Did Jerry put you up to this? No, Andrew. > (He harangued me for months and months -- it felt like decades -- > about this issue.) I'm sure it *felt* that way to you but I don't believe I "haranged" you. For the benefit of newer members, including Paul, this discussion took place mostly in a thread titled "assumptions, assumptions, assumptions" which began in the Spring of 1996 and lasted, as Andrew suggests, for a number of months and was re-born the following year. After reading Paul's [OPE-L:4876] I was tempted to comment but decided against it, but now that Andrew has dragged my name into this discussion, I will briefly comment: To begin with, I am not convinced that Marx *ever* made this assumption. The instances (2) that Andrew has cited in the past do not, I believe, hold up to scrutiny. Thus, when Marx said that "even if workers live on air" this was more along the lines of if one of us were to write "even if the Earth was made of green cheese". Would we by so doing be making the "green cheese assumption"? I don't think so. Rather, we would simply be making a metaphorical expression. > Marxists continually build models of reproduction > without > including an armaments sector. But capitalism could not reproduce > itself for a week, maybe not even for a day, if the State were not > armed to the teeth. So your argument applies equally well against > such models of reproduction. But once we include armaments, we > also need to include a separate sector for army boots, because the > military can't keep the "peace" barefoot. Etc. Etc. > > What I don't understand is why no one ever raises the "capitalism > would be impossible" argument in such contexts. This is a misleading analogy. It is entirely legitimate to *initially* abstract from the role of the state (and, thereby, the armaments industry). The basic point, though, is that any model or illustration which assumes v = 0 *is not and can not be adequate for even the most abstract model or illustration of a CAPITALIST economy*. This is because the class relations associated with capitalism represent essential parts of the very definition of capitalism (and the subject of _Capital_). To not include v in a illustration of "capitalism" (which the "living on air" assumption does) is thereby a *mis-specification* of the basic parameters of the subject (capitalism). I *still* don't understand why the assumption that v remains *constant* instead of v = 0 isn't made in these very abstract numerical illustrations. At a minimum, it would save confusion. In writing the above, I nonetheless would prefer that we not again discuss this subject at length. Why don't we just say that Andrew disagrees with the above and leaves it at that? In solidarity, Jerry
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