I had forgotten about James O' Connor's classic Fiscal Crisis of the State.
Max Sawicky was writing a review of it. Max, do you write the review?
May we read it?
yours, r
Given, then, the specifically bourgeois form of the state--and I
admit to being hardly clear as to what these structural limits on
real democracy are, but this is what I would like to
investigate--perhaps we should not be surprised by both (a) the
limits on state stabilization policy and
Hi Rakesh,
Jurriaan, I would like to read it. There is a chapter on the state in
Late Capitalism, if I remember correctly. This would have been
written after that?
Yes. Mandel was influenced considerably by Leo Kofler (1907-1995), who was a
German social philosopher/historian from Cologne.
Title: Re: [PEN-L] value and gender: dirty deeds done
dirt ch
Jim notes
the differential rate of exploitation
divides and conquers the working class (either
domestically or internationally or both) and all else equal, raises
the over-all rate of exploitation. Similarly, the weaker the working
Interesting that while Noam Chomsky is understood to be (or
understands himself as) an anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist, he seems
to support Robert Pollin's and Robin Hahnel's attempts to specify the
essence of the rational state in terms of which the actual state is
then criticized as corrupted
Ahmet, please don't mind my saying that while these findings are
indeed presented in your co-written book, that book is difficult
reading for the non economist. And it seems to me that your
dissertation with even more explicit discussion of state theory in
light of your very important empirical
oops I meant to write
If this the case ONLY in the US, then we couldn't speak of the
limits of the capitalist state.
Gil, thanks for the well informed post. You raise the level of discussion.
I suspect this assessment is myopic at best, and largely beside the point
when it comes to comparing the Clinton and Bush II regimes. In the US, the
trend toward greater wealth and income inequality began in the 1970s and
Oh darn I get annoyed when others submit corrections to their posts.
And now I'll have done it twice in a day. Shouldn't send things off
immediately. Since the discussion is serious and important, I should
treat these emails as attempts at communication rather than private
notes.
I obviously meant
Julio:
At this juncture, you have an administration whose policies, domestic and
foreign, are exactly what the left is supposed to be against. Yet, Cockburn
is busy criticizing Bill Clinton and Paul Krugman!
Well, who else is supposed to criticize the Democrats? Salon.com? The
Nation Magazine?
Title: Re: [PEN-L] the Clinton years
Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
In short, Cockburn's underlying
criticism seems hardly structural; it seems to
retain state fetishism.
It's not at all structural because he wants to annoy liberal
Nation
readers. It doesn't seem like the most urgent political task
Paul,
I would be interested in this paper.
Given tendency for relative reduction in valorization base--coupled
with fact that the higher the rate of exploitation already is, the
less productivity gains can raise it further--I have trouble
understanding how a rise in the rate of increase in the
I hope that Fred comments on why and how he measures the VCC
differently than Wolff.
It's unclear why in one period there would be capital saving
innovations and in another period not. Schumpeterian bouts of
innovation?
As for sectoral disaggregation, I don't see how the movement of
capital into
I actually do deny the existence of a physical surplus, in the
real world.
ok Andrew you deny the existence of A physical surplus.
The concept is appealing, but ultimately meaningless. Physical
things are heterogeneous, and there are surpluses of some,
deficits of others. There cannot be
Andrew writes:
A physical surplus and the physical surplus mean exactly the
same thing in this context.
ok
I do not deny, but affirm that with rising productivity there is
indeed some rough sense in which we can say that [a falling] mass
of
surplus value [corresponds to] a greater physical
I am just trying to get Marx's basic vision.
Does this sound right?
By c and v, I mean the money sums laid out as constant and variable capital
The cost price (c+v) of each commodity drops. It gives the first
moving capitalist an immediate advantage, and greater ability to all
capitals to
Gil writes:
On the
first question, I suspect the distinction Keynes is alluding to involves
the difference between *physical* and *revenue* productivity.
OK, I get that
An
investment may lead to a new machine being built, but not necessarily to
any money being made from the use of the
Since Andrew said he wasn't getting all his incoming messages, I
shall repost the following questions (of course if John E or Manuel
or Gary or Mat has answers, I would appreciate it):
And one can reply: well didn't Marx himself make such an assumption
of classical natural or equilibrium
I'm not sure what the below is in response to, but briefly:
Andrew,
If you are going to address me, please use my name at some point.
Please do not use the passive voice as Jim D in replying to one of
claims. It has been asserted that... For example, you could have
said I'm not sure what
Silence = suppression of Marx. Diversion = suppression of Marx.
Sarcastic dismissal = suppression of Marx..
Andrew Kliman
I do not see how these identities were arrived at. As general
statements, I cannot imagine anything more absurd.
At the very least, it seems to me that such
In a pen-l message on March 12, it is asserted that:It seems that Joan
Robinson and John Strachey had an argument similar to the recent one between
Devine and Moseley.
The record should be clear that there is no similarity between the quoted
passages to the discussion between myself and Fred. We
Gil wrote, quoting me:
The basis you offer for the first statement is
It is the scarcity of surplus labor in the production process that
ensures the relative scarcity of capital with respect to labor: the
diminishing flow of surplus value relative to rising minimum capital
requirements
Michael writes:
One more short, but obvious point regarding profit and surplus value.
Marx did offer one simple proof of the role of surplus value in the
creation of profit. Suppose, he says, that we take the working class as a
whole. If the working-class did not produce anymore than it
Michael writes:
For Marx, value is unobservable. It is a fundamental to price, in
the sense that prices and profits depend on what happens in the
sphere of value, but Marx paid little attention to the manner in
which value gives rise to prices.
Marx however was concerned with exactly why
Shane Mage
When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all
things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even
downright silly.
When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that
all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N.
Tom Walker wrote:
I see the hair-shirt left-wing gloomster crowd is at it again wringing their
hands in ghoulish glee at the misery that will befall the working class and
lead lickety-split to the final conflict. When will you guys ever learn
that rotten and corrupt as it is, capitalism provides
Jim D wrote:
It's interesting that a foreign-tradefinance expert like PK never mentions
that a lot of the steel industry's problems recently have been due to the
steep appreciation of the dollar (relative to its biggest trading partners)
since 1995.
__
Yet this raises the question: if the
It seems that Joan Robinson and John Strachey had an argument similar
to the recent one between Devine and Moseley. Unlike Fred, Strachey
was by the time he wrote the following about to abandon revolutionary
Marxism.
this is from the Modern Quarterly, no 4, vol 1 (October, 1938):
Mr Keynes
Strachey's explanation is a bit mechanical. Rising wages can put
pressure on capitalists to renew their capital.
Strachey has an implicit response, though I think there are many
questionable assumptions embedded in it.
Say rising wages leads to adoption of new and improved capital goods
In economic terms, the current rot can be traced to a business
backlash against gains made by labor after WWII. Galbraith and
Ferguson point out that government policy was vastly better 40 years
ago than it is today, despite, obviously, the horrid social relations
then extant.
Bill, how and
Gil had written:
1) SCARCITY. Skillman: As Roemer quite explicitly explains
elsewhere in GTEC, the means of production must also be *scarce* for
exploitation to arise. .. this is equivalent to asserting the
equivalence of exploitation with differential ownership of *scarce*
means of
Ian
thanks much for forwarding this.
US exports to the EU and Japan are capital goods heavy, no? Need to
look at James Galbraith's and Andrew Warner's data. So it's not
reflation per se the US wants but reflation insofar as it engenders a
surge in investment demand, demand for new capital
Re: Re: Yen still overvalued
by Peter Dorman
05 March 2002 22:33 UTC
Thread Index
Let me try another tack here. My understanding has been that Japan has
been historically locked
Jim D wrote:
It's interesting that a foreign-tradefinance expert like PK never mentions
that a lot of the steel industry's problems recently have been due to the
steep appreciation of the dollar (relative to its biggest trading partners)
since 1995.
__
Yet this raises the question: if the
Those who theorize the possibility of Japanese capitalism being
reformed peacefully--despite some painful short-term
adjustments--into a mature, high consumption and slow growth society
seriously misunderstand the nature of capital and the violence by
which it can only move forward as long as
After all, for value to be surplus, you need a notion of what it is
that is surplus.
Justin, the surplus concept has to be thought through. It would be
very helpful if we could do this on the list.
I think one of the ironies of economic thought here is that while
Marx criticized Ricardo
michael perelman wrote:
Sabri, please be more respectful of Dr. Rushton. He will probably win
the Nobel Prize or even imortatlity, I believe, for having discovered
the inverse relation between IQ and penis size.
I know this is a joke, Michael, but the bourgeois science thinks
Rushton is a
have to unsub.
good luck to all, r
By PAUL KRUGMAN
First comes the victory parade. Later we'll find out if we won.
We won't have a serious recovery until what economists call final demand
shows substantial increases, and workers start being rehired. Where will
that recovery come from?
Krugman makes an astonishing logical lapse
In response to Doug's (tongue-in-cheek?) comment
Never. It was a ruse devised by the bourgeoisie to occupy the
attention of otherwise smart and knowledgeable Marxian economists on
something addictively divisive but politically irrelevant.
Charles writes
Charles: Isn't it worse than that ?
Title: Re: [PEN-L:23072] Re: Re: Re: Mommy, what's a
corporat
Btw, the last time I talked to Richard, he suggested the following
piece ought to be looked at by all troublemakers who can get their
hands on it:
ARTICLE
The Thirteenth Amendment Versus the Commerce Clause: Labor and the
Shaping of
I had written:
Krugman [suffers] an astonishing logical lapse here.
He assumes rather than proves that current investment is determined
by either current or expected consumption. Marx refers to this as
the stupid dogma that the aim of capitalist production is consumption.
ok but as consumer
[Please forward to your pro-choice friends in Ohio]
Diane,
have you had a chance to read Rickie Lee Solinger's criticism of
framing the fight for abortion rights in terms of choice (there was a
favorable review in the NY TImes review of books a few weeks ago). I
have only read Solinger's
Where did Hayek use that metaphor?
The Austrian Critique, The Economist, 11 June, 1983 pp.45-8 as
reported in GR Steele The Economics of Friedrich Hayek. I think
Justin's interest in Hayek only extends to the socialist calculation
debate, not his theory of capital and business cycles?
Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
Why is that when the question of oil economics came up, I seemed to
be the only one who remembered Bina's work though Bina had been a
co-editor (I believe) of RRPE with many of you?
Hey, I had Bina on the radio. You're not the only one.
Doug
Doug, this was weeks after
Title: Ill-Treatment on Our Shores
The Progressive
http://www.progressive.org/0901/amc0302.html
March 2002 Issue
Ill-Treatment on Our Shores
by Anne-Marie Cusac
On October 24, Muhammed Butt died of a heart attack at the
Hudson County Correctional Center in Kearny, New Jersey. Butt, a
Sabri Oncu wrote:
P.S: Any forecasts on when we will be able to solve this
transformation problem?
Never. It was a ruse devised by the bourgeoisie to occupy the
attention of otherwise smart and knowledgeable Marxian economists on
something addictively divisive but politically irrelevant.
What is politeness?
It involves--says an old anthro book--recognition that every
competent adult member of a community has a public self image, a face
and thus a fear of losing face (humiliation or embarrassment) as a
result of being insulted or ignored. To be polite is to attend to
face in
Eric has now switched his thesis from RRPE did not put a ban on
Kliman because of his politics to a RRPE ban does not constitute
suppression because Kliman was free to publish elsewhere. Not very
fast footed work. Devine continues to imply that much should not be
made out of the rejection of
In pen-l 22914, Eric Nilsson charged that Andrew Kliman sent me
an e-mail message threatening me with legal action
unless I stop sending messages such as those I have been sending
to pen-l.
I did not. I sent him an e-mail message yesterday, but it
contained NO threat of legal action.
This is
I think it's because while Ernst and Bellofiore had emphasized
dynamic value alone long ago, it was becoming clear that there was a
sharp divide between temporalists and simultaneists, and many of the
bombastic dismissals of Marx in regards in particular to the falling
rate/mass of profit
and racist are the RRPE editors?
The American left is not a pretty thing from where I look.
Fight imperialism, fight racism.
Rakesh
STOP THIS RIGHT NOW.
On Sun, Feb 17, 2002 at 10:23:44AM -0800, Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
Eric has now switched his thesis from RRPE did not put a ban on
Kliman because
for reprimand?
Well you know my answer.
Rakesh
I don't have any problem at all with your ideas. I just don't think that
personal arguments have any business here.
On Sun, Feb 17, 2002 at 01:56:31PM -0800, Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
Michael,
What exactly is so objectionable about this message
In a recent post, Doug Henwood quoted the following:
the Editorial Board has removed the sanction denying Dr. Kliman
the right to submit articles to RRPE for publication.
and added sarcastically,
hey, it's important to get those value theory papers out there if
we want to overturn bourgeois
Eric,
As I said, it looks extremely suspicious that a ban was imposed on
Kliman simply because he may or may not have circulated a mss
elsewhere after (for goodness' stake) RRPE rejected it the first
time. He could have been warned, chastized, the rules could have been
clarified, etc. But a
Rakesh,
I would like proof (or at least a better argument) that Kliman was banned
because of his politics. Your argument appears to be: Kliman has a particular
politics; Kliman was banned; therefore, Kliman was banned because of his
politics.
I'll say again,
Perhaps Rakesh can explain why RRPE
could someone please post an abstract of the Andrew Kliman article that
was rejected by the REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS that started
all this brouhaha?
I want to see if it's worth the if you're not for me, you're against
me rhetoric I hear from one side.
Jim Devine
Again, Jim. The
I think it's because while Ernst and Bellofiore had emphasized
dynamic value alone long ago, it was becoming clear that there was a
sharp divide between temporalists and simultaneists, and many of the
bombastic dismissals of Marx in regards in particular to the falling
rate/mass of profit
Eric,
this is all the public and all I know:
STATEMENT BY URPE STEERING COMMITTEE, HAZEL DAYTON GUNN, MANAGING
EDITOR OF RRPE, THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF RRPE:
Dr. Andrew Kliman believed that Hazel Dayton Gunn disseminated a
claim that he had violated professional ethics by publishing an
article in
I had raised an objection to Fred's theory in 21987 and 99. I have
found that Samuel Hollander makes a similar criticism of Marx in his
classical Economics:
The curve relating the profit rate and accumulation--whatever its
slope--is continually shifting outward because of an increase in the
Steven,
thank you for your many illuminating posts.
This marking to market seems similar to the false revenue recognition
by software firms which were seem to have thumbing their noses at SEC
standards which differ for software and hardware firms. Aren't there
a whole bunch of lawsuits
Has anyone read James Galbraith's new book *Inequality and Industrial
Change*, a collection of essays by Galbraith and a variety of
co-authors? Tom Ferguson gave me a copy of one of the chapters for
which he was co-author, The American Wage Structure: 1920-1947,
which I thought was excellent.
Michael Perelman had written:
Nonetheless, neither simple nor expanded reproduction is entirely
without interest.
Both simple reproduction and simple value theory represented a significant
theoretical advance over classical economics. For example, Marx's
reproduction schemes laid
I press serious objections and you respond by calling me a believer
and flag waver instead of facing up to the fact that you have not
provided compelling reasons for your very harsh negative judgement of
value theory.
I don't read your comments as a personal attack but as evidence of
frustration
RB writes: Doug thinks Marx was an underconsumptionist; at the same Doug
subscribes to the wage led profit squeeze thesis.
DH writes: See, this is exactly what I was thinking of when I quoted
Callari's observation that VT is a substitute for politics. I don't think
you could ever prove this
You still don't get it. Even if there is enough demand takes up 100%
of the production, the profitability drops because the stuff can be
produced cheaper, but the firms who invested in the
oldertechnmologies have these huge sunk costs taht they cannot nake
back.
Still don't understand how we
And how could Marx define the absolute general law of capitalist
accumulation in the way he does in Ch XXV if his theory of value
was not
a) dynamic
b )systemic?
Mine is not an overimaginative reading of the overall thrust of
Marx's approach, (although unimaginative readings of Marx's
Christian,
Can't follow what you're getting at. Please restate.
Rakesh,
Let me try this definition (open to revision of course):
Value is the socially necessary abstract labor time which
potentially objectified in a commodity has as its only and
necessary form of appearance units of money.
So Ian seems to have taken Blaug's word for it.
I took this to mean that the quest to get a price theory out of KM's
theory of value was a mistake.
Marx was not interested in an equilibrium price theory (Mattick's
chapters in Marx and Keynes are good as are Korsch's chapters in Karl
Marx).
Historical Materialism
by Justin Schwartz
07 February 2002 05:59 UTC
As we've all been remiss in pointing out until now, the most
powerful critique of Capital -- in the last decade at the very
least -- makes no use whatsoever of value theory. What is missing
from that
As is always the case with these debates, I can't resist the urge to
ask - so what? Why is the value controversy so important? Why is it
so important for Justin to reject it and Rakesh to defend it?
This started with a brief remark. Then someone asked me to explain
why I reject the LTV. Then
Doug writes:
Doug thinks Marx was an underconsumptionist; at the same Doug
subscribes to the wage led profit squeeze thesis.
See, this is exactly what I was thinking of when I quoted Callari's
observation that VT is a substitute for politics. I don't think you
could ever prove this
Charles Brown wrote:
Isn't value theory a premise of Doug's book ?
Doug writes:
If you mean that workers produce everything of value (in conjunction
with some goods supplied by nature), and that much division and
redivision of the spoils goes on, and that finance can obscure those
Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
except that it illuminates what is plain for all to see--the
importance not greater purchasing power as a 'solution' and/or
solution but of the destruction and the devaluation of capital in
the restoration of profitability, accumulation and therefore the
realization
A contemptuous comment.
R, this is not the first time you have taken my rejection of your
pet theory as a personal attack. In the world of scholarship, it is
normal for people to disagree sharply about fundamentals, and even
to think the ideas and reserach programs of others as fundamentally
Justin writes:
. Or (2) (as Rakesh suggests) there is athe moral deprecaition line,
the idea that value explains crisis.
Crisis is explained on the basis of the law of value, not by
reference to moral depreciation at all. In fact I did not suggest
that moral depreciation explains crisis at
I don't accept GET. I'm basically a Robinsonian/Kaleckian institutionalist
with a large dash of Austrian thrown in for spice.
In her essay on Marxian economics, Joan Robinson attempts to point
Marx's crisis theory in the direction of the kind of
underconsumptionism that Sweezy was
Justin wrote
No doubt I am careless and illiterate, also lazy and stupid. I do
see how moral depreciation offers a theory of crisis.
yes you are right. It can play a role in a theory of crisis. But it
not what I was trying to explain in terms of it if you are interested
in conversing with
No doubt I am unclear. However, it is possible to accept some of an
author's views without accepting all of them. I urge this in the
case of Robinsin, marx, and Brenner. jks
Urge all you want. It does not mean that they can be coherently put
together. And Michael P: please note that I did
You still don't get it. Even if there is enough demand takes up 100%
of the production, the profitability drops because the stuff can be
produced cheaper, but the firms who invested in the
oldertechnmologies have these huge sunk costs taht they cannot nake
back.
Still don't understand how
In response to Christian:
As a result of moral depreciation, the older means of production as
use values have not changed; nor has the concrete labor embodied
therein changed. What changes is the the aliquot of homogeneous,
social, and abstract labor time represented by those means. The key
As with most definitional debates or what seems futile hairsplitting
and mere semantics, the hope is that clarity as to definitions will
help prevent confusion and mutual incomprehension at a later stage in
the debate. For example, I think much of the debate in value theory
could be more
Justin,
a short reply.
the disallowing of qualitative change in outputs and inputs and
setting them equal in price by assumption seems to make analysis
inherently static. This is why these assumptions are hotly contested.
As far as I can tell, this is just a way of reminding us that any
R, I think we have reached the point of diminishing marginal
returns. I agree with Fred Guy: the work on the LTV for a century
has been a desperate, inward-turning attempt tos how that it can be
made coherent in the face of increasing masses of fatal objections,
and it's not doing real work.
I thought I was pretty mild.
Referring to your interlocutor as desperate and inward turning is
clearly not mild, but I suspect that I shall be blamed for the rancor
on the list as I was supposed to take the heat for Paul Phillips'
explosion.
Moreover, note that I raised the question
Title: Re: [PEN-L:22419] Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: LOV
and
Why is domination functional for increasing
exploitation? The answer highlights a third problem with Roemer's
argument which turns on a crucial assumption of his models. In these
what workers sell is labour, not labour power, or,
Justin writes in regard to moral depreciation:
. I don't see why the LTV has to be true to explain this. I have
never denied, nor does the the most orthodox bourgeois economist,
that if you can save labor costs by adopting a new production
technique, that people who have sunk costs in onld
Front page story in today's WSJ is pretty darn lucid.
Doug, in Wall Street, you chart the shifting relations between
rentiers and corporate insiders.
Does this Enron case indicate that the relations have shifted again?
An anomalous case? It seems that the rentiers have been juked for the
A reasonable objection. Actually I don't think it's uninteresting,
but I don't think the way it gets deployed in Capital is ultimately
useful or necessary. I do think that it plays an important role, but
not an exclusive one, in explaining the dynamics of market
economies; Marx treated the
Justin writes:
Why? The question is, what work does this alleged quantity do?
Are you saying social labor time is alleged quantity like centaurs?
Or are you asking me what does labor in fact do?
No, the quantity exists, but so does the quantity that consists of
the average ifference between
Miyachi,
May I have the Michael Billing source cite?
Thanks, Raksh
Justin writes:
It does no real theoretical work. Whatw ork does labor value do, if
virtualy the entire apparatus ofg Marxism theory can be restated
without it?
Now yes Steedman argues that one can go straight from the physical
production data and a uniform real wage to the determination
Jim writes:
(2) no, Marx shows convincingly in volume III of CAPITAL that as long as (1)
the rate of surplus-value is constant and uncorrelated with the OCC; (2) the
OCC differs between industries; and (3) the rate of profit tends toward
equality between sectors, prices gravitate toward
Jim writes:
(2) no, Marx shows convincingly in volume III of CAPITAL that as long as (1)
the rate of surplus-value is constant and uncorrelated with the OCC; (2) the
OCC differs between industries; and (3) the rate of profit tends toward
equality between sectors, prices gravitate toward prices
Hi Steven,
Thank you very much for your very interesting Take the Money Enron
... I was especially interested in the following paragraph:
Unfortunately, hundreds of companies now rely on this explosive
combination of private placements and off balance sheet entities. The last
decade
Charles,
I do not know whether science has ethical implications but the
practice of science and rational argument depends on ethical
commitments--good faith attempts to understand the other side, to
consider and carefully engage counter-criticism before launching the
same criticism in the
Hi Justin:
I think that the distinction is valid and it is a very serious flaw
in Roemer's critique of Marxian exploitation theory that he misses
the significancxe of it.
OK, good.
That is something quite independent of Roemer's positive theory of
exploitation, the possibility of a
I have defended that formulation in What's Wrong with Exploitation?,
Nous 1995, availabkle on the net in the old marxism spoons archive.
However, I argued that it did not require the labor theory of value
in Marx's canonical formulation to state it. More generally, the
point is that
The rate of profit and recession
by Rakesh Bhandari
29 January 2002 20:45 UTC
why is there overaccumulation in the system as a whole? why is
global investment demand not strong and high enough to realize the
surplus value that remains latent in commodities?
Let us suppose
[somehow my e-mail program isn't cooperating again. Here's my complete
message.]
[I thought I started writing a reply to this, but somehow there's no file.
I'm sorry if anyone received two versions.]
Paul Phillips writes: The question we were discussing, I thought, was what
explains the drop in
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