Re: Re: Value talk/Engels Marx
Note: The human eye cannot see emergence, or rather the outbreak of crisis is witnessed at its second phase. Hence, prediction based on the law system discovered by Karl Marx 150 years ago. The capitalistic mode of production moves in these two forms of the antagonism immanent to it from its very origin. It is never able to get out of that vicious circle which Fourier had already discovered. What Fourier could not, indeed, see in his time is that this circle is gradually narrowing; that the movement becomes more and more a spiral, and must come to an end, like the movement of planets, by collision with the center. It is the compelling force of anarchy in the production of society at large that more and more completely turns the great majority of men into proletarians; and it is the masses of the proletariat again who will finally put an end to anarchy in production. It is the compelling force of anarchy in social production that turns the limitless perfectibility of machinery under modern industry into a compulsory law by which every individual industrial capitalist must perfect his machinery more and more, under penalty of ruin. But the perfecting of machinery is making human labor superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of manual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves. It means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wage workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845, available at the times when industry is working at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street when the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead weight upon the limbs of the working-class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for keeping of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital. Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery becomes the most powerful weapon in the war of capital against the working-class; that the instruments of labor constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands of the laborer; that they very product of the worker is turned into an instrument for his subjugation. Thus it comes about that the economizing of the instruments of labor becomes at the same time, from the outset, the most reckless waste of labor-power, and robbery based upon the normal conditions under which labor functions; that machinery, the most powerful instrument for shortening labor time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the laborer's time and that of his family at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital. (Capital, English edition, p. 406) Thus it comes about that the overwork of some becomes the preliminary condition for the idleness of others, and that modern industry, which hunts after new consumers over the whole world, forces the consumption of the masses at home down to a starvation minimum, and in doing thus destroys its own home market. The law that always equilibrates the relative surplus- population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the laborer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with the accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital (Marx's Capital, p. 661) We have seen that the ever-increasing perfectibility of modern machinery is, by the anarchy of social production, turned into a compulsory law that forces the individual industrial capitalist always to improve his machinery, always to increase its productive force. The bare possibility of extending the field of production is transformed for him into a similarly compulsory law. The enormous expansive force of modern industry, compared with which that of gases is mere child's play, appears to us now as a necessity for expansion, both qualitative and quantitative, that laughs at all resistance. Such resistance is offered by consumption, by sales, by the markets for the products of modern industry. But the capacity for extension, extensive and intensive, of the markets is primarily governed by quite different laws that work much less energetically. The extension of the markets cannot keep pace with the extension of production. The collision becomes inevitable, and as this cannot produce any real solution so long as it does not break in pieces the capitalist mode of production, the collisions become periodic. Capitalist production has begotten another vicious
Re: African American History Month
4. AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH: NEW RACISM BASED ON CLASS, NOT COLOR By Nelson Peery African American History Month, 2002 is celebrated in the midst of economic, social and political changes that are reshaping our world. The African Americans, along with the rest of the American people, are facing new conditions and new problems as a result. When fundamental things change, everything dependent upon them must also change. This does not imply that results of change are direct or immediate. However, scientific thinking demands that we find the motivation for change, place such changes in their proper context and make some estimate of their consequences. The African American question has undergone great change since the end of World War II. Few people today even attempt to describe the question. Historically this description has been a question of caste, a special question of class because of the color question, a national question or a national-colonial question. Most political activists assume that there has been no change in the dynamics, and organizations continue to be formed around these various conceptions. These descriptions were based on observation over a long period of time. What were some of these observations? The first was that since the color line was the dominant factor, all African Americans regardless of education or wealth were subjected to the same oppression, segregation and discrimination. Secondly, that segregation had produced the essential elements of a distinct culture expressing an African American people. The conclusion by the Left was that racial discrimination could not be overcome except by the destruction of the capitalist system and the reconstruction of society on a socialist basis. Four elements have intervened to change this situation. First and foremost was the determined and militant struggle of the African Americans themselves. Seldom in history has such a small group -- around 12 percent of the population -- carried out such a heroic struggle against such a pervasive social ideology and against such a brutal state apparatus of oppression. Without this element, none of the other elements could have brought about change. The second element was the mechanization of southern agriculture. That was the basis of the freedom struggle. Third, the Cold War was the context for the totality of the final stage of that struggle. The struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States opened doors that would have remained shut. The Soviets constantly used African American oppression as one of their most effective propaganda weapons in the struggle for allies in the Third World. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson -- all were forced by the State Department to take steps in dismantling legal segregation. The fourth element was the introduction of electronics in production and communications and the subsequent globalization of the commodity and labor market. Today, we must describe the African American question within this context. The end of one stage of the struggle came with the African Americans using their newly won political power -- often in alliance with progressive whites -- to elect their representatives into the various organs of government. An example of this was the situation around Carl Stokes who in 1967 had been elected the first African American mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. Black kids walking through their changing neighborhood were attacked by whites with baseball bats and one of the whites was stabbed to death. (The stabber was eventually acquitted on self defense.) A white mob prepared to storm the mayor's mansion. When white police said they could not stop the mob, the black police who had organized themselves to protect the mayor warned the white police that they would open up with automatic weapons if the mob crossed the last street between them and the mansion. Black police were defending the black representative of the black community. Or take the case of Harold Washington, former mayor of Chicago. With his election, all the white council members save one formed a solid bloc of opposition that practically stopped the city from carrying on its business. The African Americans who won or were appointed to important offices during this period were, essentially, representatives of the African American community. They represented Black power. It is clear that such outstanding persons as Colin Powell or Condolezza Rice do not represent the African American community, nor do they symbolize Black power. Profound economic and political changes consolidated America's economic, political and military position as the world's sole super power. For this superpower's government, racial discrimination became a profitless, politically embarrassing anachronism. Business organizations such as Denny's restaurants learned by paying out millions of dollars that the government would not defend nor
Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism
Ian Murray wrote: = As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV has circularities of it's own. I suspect I'm over my head here both re political economy epistemology, or whatever is at stake, But I think I'll butt in anyhow. In _German Ideology_ (I'm paraphrasing from memory) M/E claim they do have premises -- namely, actual living individuals. (Actual living is my insertion to allow for the repudiation of the abstract individual in the Theses on Feurerbach.) I gloss this as affirming that wherever and whenever we find outselves we are already caught up in, constituted by, action (social relations), indepently of which we have no existence. So now the question is how, under given historical conditions, those actual individuals (defined by their social relations at any historical point) allocate their living activity; how do they transform their condition while reproducing it. And I think that starting out there, we get a LOV totally different from (e.g.) Ricardo's, and moreover, the only place to start is with that living human activity, whether or not following it up brings us back to our premises. In other words, we must _either_ hold to some form of LOV as fundamental, or we must place outselves outside of time and space, in a Platonic empyrean, examing the world from outside as Plato attempts to do in the _Republic_. Not only neoclassical but all bourgeois forms of political economy (economics) lead us back either to Plato or to William James's blooming buzzing chaos. (Quote not accurate but makes the point.) Carrol P.S. A philological note: _G.I._ does not, I think, have any independent validity as a source of Marx's or Engels's thought -- i.e. it is valid (as a source) only as corrected looking backward from their mature work. When used in isolation from or independently of that later work it makes one wish the mice had done a better job of criticism.
Yamaha to open motorcycle research unit in China
The Times of India MONDAY, FEBRUARY 04, 2002 Yamaha to open motorcycle research unit in China AFP MONDAY, FEBRUARY 04, 2002 TOKYO: Japan's major motorcycle maker Yamaha Motor plans to open a research and development unit in China in 2003, a news report said on Monday. The company plans to use the facility to integrate operations related to design, procurement, production and marketing, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said. The move is aimed at more quickly developing products that better meet local needs in the world's largest motorcycle market, the financial daily said. An operation to handle motorcycle materials and components is to be set up later this year, with the new R and D firm likely to be established in or around Shanghai, the newspaper said. Copyright © 2002 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.
Fwd: Newsletter
The following stories can be found among many other new articles at http://www.redglobe.info. You can post stories there as well. ++ # Please link to our site # Please put the link to your sites into our link section ++ # Peltier: Urgent Action URGENT ACTION! PRESS THE GOVERNMENT REFORM COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE PELTIER CASE! http://www.placerouge.info/article.php?sid=62mode=threadorder=0thold=0 Friends, The House Government Reform Committee is holding hearings on FBI misconduct relating to wrongful convictions. The hearings were prompted by the release of two Boston men who were framed by the FBI and held wrongfully in prison for more than 32 years. Their two co-defendants, also innocent, died in prison. Congressman Burton, who chairs the committee, --- Statement of the German Comunist Party (DKP) Munich Munich under Martial Law http://www.placerouge.info/article.php?sid=59mode=threadorder=0thold=0 Munich under martial law: thousands defy total ban on democracy and march against a policy of war Munich was under martial law at the first weekend of February on the occasion of the NATO \Security conference\. Democracy and freedom of speech were abolished. Every kind of protest was planned to be suffocated from the very start by bans on demonstrations and meetings, sending back people at the borders, controlling them on streets and in trains, placing the organizers under \preventive\ arrest and arresting hundreds of demonstrators. Thousands of policemen tried to carry through a total ban on demonstrations. But neither on Thursday, nor on Friday . -- Death Sentences in Iraq -- Source: Iraq CP http://www.placerouge.info/article.php?sid=58mode=threadorder=0thold=0 Four Prisoners Die As a Result of Disease and Ill-treatmentPilot Executed for Attempting to Flee Iraq 6-2-2002 Iraqi Communist Party sources have reported that the authorities of the dictatorial regime executed airforce major (pilot) Abdul Mun'im Farhan Shehab in Abu Ghraib Prison on 2nd January 2002. The sentence was carried out in accordance with presidential decree No. 806. He was charged with attempting to escape from Iraq through Jordan. -- Cable Street Beat Cable street Beat- Strictly Antifascist A little trip to the fascist march in Bielefeld http://www.placerouge.info/article.php?sid=51mode=threadorder=0thold=0 Welcome to the real world, fascist arseholes. Yesterday, Saturday the second of February, some CSB-Skins and antifascist friends gave some fascist bastards the chance to get a little impression of the real skinhead world. The fascists planned a big demonstration in Bielefeld, and we decided to visit them. The day began very funny. Some of us wanted to buy cigarettes at a petrol station, that happened to be a meeting point for countryside fascists, who, seeing real skins, flew at once as fast as they could. Other ones could be convinced, not to visit the fascist march without having used any aggression! We just talked to them, but they didn`t believe us. Somehow these patriotic heroes thought, they would have to die in the very near future, so they took a little piss without having taken off their camouflage trousers. Too much fear, no courage, they look for easy victims, but they can´t stand being confronted with the consequences of their deeds. ... http://www.placerouge.info freehosting for radical left sites. No adds, no banners, no costs ICQ 127495375
RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism
Ian Murray wrote: As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV [sic] has circularities of it's own. what circularities are those? and why is circularity bad, unless there is nothing to the theory but circularities? Physics and geometry, for example, both involve circularities (e.g. force is defined by mass times acceleration, but mass is defined by force/acceleration and acceleration is defined by force/mass). Are you following Blaug to accept Popperian falsification, a criterion that makes _all_ social science (or almost all) worthless? Carrol Cox wrote: I suspect I'm over my head here both re political economy epistemology, or whatever is at stake, But I think I'll butt in anyhow. In _German Ideology_ (I'm paraphrasing from memory) M/E claim they do have premises -- namely, actual living individuals. (Actual living is my insertion to allow for the repudiation of the abstract individual in the Theses on Feurerbach.) in the GI, ME are pretty clear that they're talking about actual living individuals, not abstract ones. I gloss this as affirming that wherever and whenever we find outselves we are already caught up in, constituted by, action (social relations), indepently of which we have no existence. So now the question is how, under given historical conditions, those actual individuals (defined by their social relations at any historical point) allocate their living activity; how do they transform their condition while reproducing it. And I think that starting out there, we get a LOV totally different from (e.g.) Ricardo's, and moreover, the only place to start is with that living human activity, whether or not following it up brings us back to our premises. In other words, we must _either_ hold to some form of LOV as fundamental, or we must place outselves outside of time and space, in a Platonic empyrean, examing the world from outside as Plato attempts to do in the _Republic_. Not only neoclassical but all bourgeois forms of political economy (economics) lead us back either to Plato or to William James's blooming buzzing chaos. (Quote not accurate but makes the point.) that makes sense to me. P.S. A philological note: _G.I._ does not, I think, have any independent validity as a source of Marx's or Engels's thought -- i.e. it is valid (as a source) only as corrected looking backward from their mature work. When used in isolation from or independently of that later work it makes one wish the mice had done a better job of criticism. yes, but the GI and THE THESES ON FEUERBACH present the clearest explanation of ME's materialist conception of history. -- Jim Devine
Re: Re: LOV and LTV
But Justin, do you accept that what you criticise as being redundant some of us would merely call a labor theory of prices? Not merely. Marx attemptedto use value theory to do a lot of work, e.g., as part od a theory of crisis, as a component of his account of commodity fetishism, as an account of the nature of money, and, of course, as the explanation of profit, exploitation, surplus value, and the rate of these things. However, he correctly started from the premises that to do this work, value had to be quantity with a determinable magnitude, and price is the point of entry into that because value appears as price and profit in the phenonemal world. If value theory breaks down there, it's toast, as Marx also recognized, which is why he and Engels and traditional Marxism were concerned with the transformation problem. In these respect he was more intellectually honest that the latter-day defenders of value theory who want the quantity without being able to determine its measure. And from the perspective of it being an expanation of exploitation, some of us would say that childen notice there are grossly unfair and inexplicable differences in society. Unlike me, right? I think that all the inequalities that exist are just great. But here you depart from Marxism: Unfair is a charge he would dismissa sa bourgeois whine. As a liberal democrat, I myself think he was wrong about that--I think justice talk is very important--but I find it odd that you insist on orthodoxy in political economy while rejecting Marx's ideologiekritik of morality in general and talk of justice and fairness in particular. Finally, I don't understand why you think you can't explain inequality with value theory. Here's Roemer['s explanation: the bourgeoisie grabbed the means of production by force or acquired them by luck, and used their ill-gotten resources to maintain their unfair advantages. Not a whisper of value, and so far as it goes a perfectly true, and indeed Marxian explanation. Some of us would say that the marxian theory of value is much bigger than an explanation of exploitation. Without being persuaded by us, do you acknowedge that such different perspectives exist? Do you mean, do I recognize that you persist in error? Yes. jks _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism
Ian Murray wrote: As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV [sic] has circularities of it's own. what circularities are those? and why is circularity bad, unless there is nothing to the theory but circularities? Physics and geometry, for example, both involve circularities (e.g. force is defined by mass times acceleration, but mass is defined by force/acceleration and acceleration is defined by force/mass). This is a fundamental confusion. Firstly, you talk only about physics and not geometry. Geometry proceeds from independent axioms and postulates and does not involve circularities. Moreover, the fact that you can rewrite equations like F=ma with different variables on the left side of the equality does not make physics circular. In fact, the variables are implicitly defined in the context of the entire system of equation in which they appear. Are you following Blaug to accept Popperian falsification, a criterion that makes _all_ social science (or almost all) worthless? In defense of Popper, it does not. I am not a Popperian. And Popper was (despite the way he is usually taught) an early discoverer of what is called the Quine-Duhem thesis, that you can hold any proposition true by making appropriate adjustments elsewhere. The unobjecionable point he had tomake about falsificationsim is that a hypothesis sin;t worth much if you threat it as true come what may, amking it absolutely immune to testing. If all of social science is like that, then it is worthless. But that's not what I think of as good social science. I do rather suspect that some of the defenses of value theory one display lately have smacked of this vice, though. jks _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
LOV and LTV
LOV and LTV by Carrol Cox 06 February 2002 20:42 UTC Charles, some where in Anti-Duhring Engels says that dialectics neither proves anything nor discovers anything new. Sorry I can't quote it exactly or give you an exact cite. Some writer used that as a text on the basis of which he rejected dialectics completely. ^ CB: Yes, I have a memory of something like that, but I can't remember the exact statement. I would think that it might be said of formal logic ( Aristotlean with recent additions) that it cannot discover anything new. We'd have to have the exact quote, but I would wonder about the idea that dialectics does not discover anything new. It would seem that Marx used the notion of the contradictions within capitalism as the source of the new society, socialism. This use of the logic of contradictions seems a use of dialectics to discover the fundamentals of the new society. So that would be dialectics involved in discovering something new. I also get the impression that Marx considered that he used dialectics in discovering the secret of surplus value, as he and Engels refer to it. Doesn't that seem dialectics involved in discovering something new ? ( I mean new to the science of political economy). In fact , I would almost say that dialectics helps with discovering the new, but maybe not proving things. Whereas, formal logic is used in proofs, but not to discover anything new.
Popperian falsification
Are you following Blaug to accept Popperian falsification, a criterion that makes _all_ social science (or almost all) worthless? Not quite all social science: the social science of astrology makes twelve falsifiable predictions every morning in my newspaper and thus qualifies as a science on Popperian grounds. http://www.adequacy.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2002/1/16/0333/18359 dd ___ Email Disclaimer This communication is for the attention of the named recipient only and should not be passed on to any other person. Information relating to any company or security, is for information purposes only and should not be interpreted as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any security. The information on which this communication is based has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, but we do not guarantee its accuracy or completeness. All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice. All e-mail messages, and associated attachments, are subject to interception and monitoring for lawful business purposes. ___
LOV and LTV
LOV and LTV by Justin Schwartz 05 February 2002 19:49 UTC Charles writes: Can we get into a little more what a heuristic is ? Seems to be a sort of ok device for guiding scientific enquire, but sort of not a fulfledged ...what ? Theoretical concept ? What is the term for other types of ideas ( that are more than heuristic ) that are used in scientific or economic theories ? Theory, law, variable, etc. CB: Lets talk more about scientific laws. Here's Einstein's statement of the first law of physics. Albert Einstein (1879*1955). Relativity: The Special and General Theory. 1920. IV. The Galileian System of Co-ordinates AS is well known, the fundamental law of the mechanics of Galilei-Newton, which is known as the law of inertia, can be stated thus: A body removed sufficiently far from other bodies continues in a state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line. This law not only says something about the motion of the bodies, but it also indicates the reference-bodies or systems of co-ordinates, permissible in mechanics, which can be used in mechanical description. The visible fixed stars are bodies for which the law of inertia certainly holds to a high degree of approximation. Now if we use a system of co-ordinates which is rigidly attached to the earth, then, relative to this system, every fixed star describes a circle of immense radius in the course of an astronomical day, a result which is opposed to the statement of the law of inertia. So that if we adhere to this law we must refer these motions only to systems of co-ordinates relative to which the fixed stars do not move in a cir! cle. A system of co-ordinates of which the state of motion is such that the law of inertia holds relative to it is called a Galileian system of co-ordinates. The laws of the mechanics of Galilei-Newton can be regarded as valid only for a Galileian system of co-ordinates. CB: Seems to me that Marx's law of value is just as fulfledged as the law. It generates only ordinal, not cardinal, quantitative predictions. The law has a limited application,etc. Also, in the above law, theory, variable are not theoretical concepts in the sense of what value would be in a scientific theory. Force would be a theoretical concept that is in a corresponding role to value in the theory of mechanics.
Zoellick Senate Testimony on Doha
http://finance.senate.gov/hearings/testimony/020602rztest.pdf
US vs Canadian Wheat
http://finance.senate.gov/hearings/testimony/020602gbtest.pdf
value vs price
Charles: Revolutions are like plate tectonic shifts in geology. They occur rarely , but their potential and tension are constant even through the normal times of small earthquakes ( That's dialectics) Jim D.:yes, but your geology is wrong: tectonic shifts happen all the time, while it's earthquakes that are rare (or at least big ones). ^^^ CB: The big one you refer to would correspond to the revolution in my analogy. It is rare. The more frequent small earthquakes would express the fundamental tension that is there for a long time, but does not resolve itself by the small ones , but only when there is a big one. The all the time you refer to are the smaller earthquakes. The full contradiction of a given fault does _not_ express itself all the time. Only in the rare big one. The whole theory of plate tectonics is an example of a dialectical development in a scientific theory after Engels and others had articulated how dialectics is expressed in science. I recall that at the time I learned the theory of plate tectonics, it overthrew a competing theory that did not posit tensions and contradictions leading up to big ones.
RE: Re: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism
Ian Murray wrote: As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV [sic] has circularities of it's own. I wrote:what circularities are those? and why is circularity bad, unless there is nothing to the theory but circularities? Physics and geometry, for example, both involve circularities (e.g. force is defined by mass times acceleration, but mass is defined by force/acceleration and acceleration is defined by force/mass). Justin says:This is a fundamental confusion. Firstly, you talk only about physics and not geometry. Geometry proceeds from independent axioms and postulates and does not involve circularities. no, the definition of major concepts such as a point and a line are quite circular. If you drop circularities from geometry, you also drop circles and other geometric forms. Moreover, the fact that you can rewrite equations like F=ma with different variables on the left side of the equality does not make physics circular. I didn't say that physics was circular. Rather, I said that physics involve[s] circularity. That's the difference between the proposition that P = C and that P includes C as a sub-set. In fact, the variables are implicitly defined in the context of the entire system of equation in which they appear. that's exactly what I said. Obviously, you have a different definition of circularity than I do? Are you following Blaug to accept Popperian falsification, a criterion that makes _all_ social science (or almost all) worthless? In defense of Popper, it does not. I am not a Popperian. good for you, but I was asking Ian. I'm not a Popperian popover either, but I think it's a useful thing for social scientists to try to make falsifiable predictions. In other words, it's good to take intellectual risks. It's also good to know when one's system is such that different parts are implicitly defined in the context of the entire theoretical system, so that one knows the limits of one's thinking. And Popper was (despite the way he is usually taught) an early discoverer of what is called the Quine-Duhem thesis, that you can hold any proposition true by making appropriate adjustments elsewhere. good for him. The unobjecionable point he had tomake about falsificationsim is that a hypothesis sin;t [ain't?] worth much if you threat [treat?] it as true come what may, amking it absolutely immune to testing. If all of social science is like that, then it is worthless. All social science that I know of involves _ceteris paribus_ clauses and the like, which doesn't make the theory worthless (in my eyes), but does make it non-falsifiable. (The reason why _my_ theory didn't work was because all else wasn't equal!) BTW, the Popperian falsification criterion is itself immune to falsification. But that's not what I think of as good social science. good. I do rather suspect that some of the defenses of value theory one display lately have smacked of this vice, though. which ones? JDevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
- Original Message - From: Justin Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] The empirical equivalence thesis is part of Q-D, no? Wasn't meaning to suggest it was the whole shebang. I don't think so. It's verificationist. Q-D is not. jks === And Q-D incorporates the EET precisely to show it's limitations lead to the UTE, no? Time for some Web of Belief tweaking eh? Ian
Re: theoretical soup
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] If I remember correctly, Robinson interpreted Marx's law of value as a Ricardian labor theory of price. Given that assumption (i.e., that the point of values was to explain price), _of course_ she should have rejected it. That's an important reason to reject that misinterpretation, the basis of almost all criticisms of Marx's heuristic. (Weirdly, that misinterpretation is shared both by most critics of Marx's law of value and also by many fundamentalists. They then feed each others' misconceptions.) === So KM set lot's of folks on a Humean constant conjunction wild goose chase with: Magnitude of value expresses a relation of social production, it expresses the connexion that necessarily exists between a certain article and the portion of the total labour-time of society required to produce it. As soon as magnitude of value is converted into price, the above necessary relation takes the shape of a more or less accidental exchange-ratio between a single commodity and another, the money-commodity. But this exchange-ratio may express either the real magnitude of that commodity's value, or the quantity of gold deviating from that value, for which, according to circumstances, it may be parted with. The possibility, therefore, of quantitative incongruity between price and magnitude of value, or the deviation of the former from the latter, is inherent in the price-form itself. This is no defect, but, on the contrary, admirably adapts the price-form to a mode of production whose inherent laws impose themselves only as the mean of apparently lawless irregularities that compensate one another. The price-form, however, is not only compatible with the possibility of a quantitative incongruity between magnitude of value and price, i.e., between the former and its expression in money, but it may also conceal a qualitative inconsistency, so much so, that, although money is nothing but the value-form of commodities, price ceases altogether to express value. Objects that in themselves are no commodities, such as conscience, honour, c., are capable of being offered for sale by their holders, and of thus acquiring, through their price, the form of commodities. Hence an object may have a price without having value. The price in that case is imaginary, like certain quantities in mathematics. On the other hand, the imaginary price-form may sometimes conceal either a direct or indirect real value-relation; for instance, the price of uncultivated land, which is without value, because no human labour has been incorporated in it. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch03.htm
RE: Popperian falsification
Are you following Blaug to accept Popperian falsification, a criterion that makes _all_ social science (or almost all) worthless? Not quite all social science: the social science of astrology makes twelve falsifiable predictions every morning in my newspaper and thus qualifies as a science on Popperian grounds. hey, if you read the astrological forecast in THE ONION, you'll find that the predictions always come true! (see http://www.theonion.com/onion3804/index.html) JD
Re: RE: Re: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: His toricalMaterialism
no, the definition of major concepts such as a point and a line are quite circular. No, they're primitives, which is different. It doesn't tell you anything you don't already to know to say that a line is infinite extension in two dimesnions without breadth, but it's not defined in terms of something that is defined in terms of a line, which is what circularity means. If you drop circularities from geometry, you also drop circles and other geometric forms. Huh? Moreover, the fact that you can rewrite equations like F=ma with different variables on the left side of the equality does not make physics circular. I didn't say that physics was circular. Rather, I said that physics involve[s] circularity. That's the difference between the proposition that P = C and that P includes C as a sub-set. It also doesn't mean that physics involves viscious circularity. In fact, the variables are implicitly defined in the context of the entire system of equation in which they appear. that's exactly what I said. Obviously, you have a different definition of circularity than I do? No it's not _exactly_ what you said, although if it's what you meant, we're on the same page. What you _said_ was that physics involves circularity because you could rewrite F=ma by rearranging the variables. I'm not a Popperian popover either, but I think it's a useful thing for social scientists to try to make falsifiable predictions. In other words, it's good to take intellectual risks. It's not intellectual risks, it's scientific research. It's also good to know when one's system is such that different parts are implicitly defined in the context of the entire theoretical system, so that one knows the limits of one's thinking. All theoretical systems are work that way, so what does that tell you about the limits of one's thinking? A hypothesis ain't worth much if you treat it as true come what may, amking it absolutely immune to testing. If all of social science is like that, then it is worthless. All social science that I know of involves _ceteris paribus_ clauses and the like, Not the same thing as holding the theory true come what may. which doesn't make the theory worthless (in my eyes), but does make it non-falsifiable. (The reason why _my_ theory didn't work was because all else wasn't equal!) No, not unless you stick with a really flat-headed version of falsifiability. Moreover, if youa lways say that, you have given up scientific inquiry. BTW, the Popperian falsification criterion is itself immune to falsification. No duh. It isn't a scientific hypothesis. It isn't a criterion of meaningfulness. It's (as Popper presented it) a demarcation criterion for sorting science fom nonscience. As normally used, it's a heuristicfor scientific research. I do rather suspect that some of the defenses of value theory one display lately have smacked of this vice, though. which ones? You're a smart guy, you figure it out. Not Rakesh's though. jks _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
Re: : Premises, Circularities
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 8:42 AM Subject: [PEN-L:22525] RE: Re: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism Ian Murray wrote: As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV [sic] has circularities of it's own. I wrote:what circularities are those? and why is circularity bad, unless there is nothing to the theory but circularities? Physics and geometry, for example, both involve circularities (e.g. force is defined by mass times acceleration, but mass is defined by force/acceleration and acceleration is defined by force/mass). Take a peak at ETIR chapter 7; I'm not gonna sum up the chapter and all the other counter claims... Not all circularities are bad, true, but some are debilitating and clearly we are at an impasse regarding this issue.Again. Ian
RE: Re: theoretical soup
I wrote: If I remember correctly, Robinson interpreted Marx's law of value as a Ricardian labor theory of price. Given that assumption (i.e., that the point of values was to explain price), _of course_ she should have rejected it. That's an important reason to reject that misinterpretation, the basis of almost all criticisms of Marx's heuristic. (Weirdly, that misinterpretation is shared both by most critics of Marx's law of value and also by many fundamentalists. They then feed each others' misconceptions.) Ian writes: So KM set lot's of folks on a Humean constant conjunction wild goose chase with: please explain what in heck a Humean constant conjunction wild goose chase is and why it is relevant. Then maybe I can figure out how the long quote from Marx fits within that rubric. Without an explanation, it sounds as if you're simply making fun of Marx for having a different theoretical framework than yours (or for having a theoretical framework at all). Jim Devine the quote from Marx (vol. I, chapter 3, on money): Magnitude of value expresses a relation of social production, it expresses the connexion that necessarily exists between a certain article and the portion of the total labour-time of society required to produce it. As soon as magnitude of value is converted into price, the above necessary relation takes the shape of a more or less accidental exchange-ratio between a single commodity and another, the money-commodity. But this exchange-ratio may express either the real magnitude of that commodity's value, or the quantity of gold deviating from that value, for which, according to circumstances, it may be parted with. The possibility, therefore, of quantitative incongruity between price and magnitude of value, or the deviation of the former from the latter, is inherent in the price-form itself. This is no defect, but, on the contrary, admirably adapts the price-form to a mode of production whose inherent laws impose themselves only as the mean of apparently lawless irregularities that compensate one another. The price-form, however, is not only compatible with the possibility of a quantitative incongruity between magnitude of value and price, i.e., between the former and its expression in money, but it may also conceal a qualitative inconsistency, so much so, that, although money is nothing but the value-form of commodities, price ceases altogether to express value. Objects that in themselves are no commodities, such as conscience, honour, c., are capable of being offered for sale by their holders, and of thus acquiring, through their price, the form of commodities. Hence an object may have a price without having value. The price in that case is imaginary, like certain quantities in mathematics. On the other hand, the imaginary price-form may sometimes conceal either a direct or indirect real value-relation; for instance, the price of uncultivated land, which is without value, because no human labour has been incorporated in it.
Re: Re: LOV and LTV
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. This is what I meant yesterday by debt and wages as the terms of capital depreciation. If I were being polemical, I might ask how you know that money always distorts value if you have no other measure of it. It seems to me that you accept that as a first principle, based on the existential description of class antagonism. But I wonder if this distortion always takes the same shape: is the value produced by the LA Lakers distorted in the same way as that by the workers who prep and clean the Staples center? I don't think so, although you could argue that what's being distorted is the snalt, not subjective labor time. Wage differences (like wages themselves), you might say, express this distortion. But then you're left explaining how Shaq's and Kobe's wages, as representations of surplus value/snalt are only in _appearance_ (since that's what wages are) different from those of the staff at Staples--in principle, they really aren't different; there's still extraction of surpl! us! value;, it just looks like they have better lives because their are multimillionaires. Then what? Christian
RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities
Assuming that ETIR refers to ECONOMIC THEORY IN RETROSPECT, I don't own a copy. Could you please give one example? I don't see why we're at an impasse regarding this issue if you could provide an example. -- JD Ian Murray wrote: As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV [sic] has circularities of it's own. I wrote:what circularities are those? and why is circularity bad, unless there is nothing to the theory but circularities? Physics and geometry, for example, both involve circularities (e.g. force is defined by mass times acceleration, but mass is defined by force/acceleration and acceleration is defined by force/mass). Take a peak at ETIR chapter 7; I'm not gonna sum up the chapter and all the other counter claims... Not all circularities are bad, true, but some are debilitating and clearly we are at an impasse regarding this issue.Again. Ian
Critics Support Terrorism: Canadian Prime Minister!
Critics defending terrorists, PM says I think Chretien is competing for the most outrageous remarks prize along with Bush's axis of evil gems. Cheers, Ken Hanly By DANIEL LEBLANC and JEFF SALLOT From Thursday's Globe and Mail Ottawa - A pugnacious Prime Minister Jean Chrétien labelled the Bloc Québécois - and by extension other government critics - as terrorist defenders Wednesday for raising questions about the U.S. treatment of prisoners captured in Afghanistan. Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe was furious over Mr. Chrétien's surprise attack, especially because the Bloc is asking the same questions as other opposition parties, groups around the world and numerous Liberal ministers and MPs, including human-rights lawyer Irwin Cotler. Mr. Chrétien was making his first comments of the week on the thorny issue of prisoners of war in Afghanistan, which has brought his government under heavy criticism. During Question Period, Mr. Duceppe asked about the deal that allowed Canadian soldiers to transfer prisoners to U.S. forces last month. Was the Prime Minister not imprudent in allowing the handover of prisoners, without having in advance obtained firm assurances that the Americans would respect the Geneva Conventions? Mr. Duceppe asked. Mr. Chrétien shot back: It was not imprudent for the government, as part of the war on terrorism, to side with the people who were attacked, and not to become defenders of the terrorists, like the Bloc Québécois. The Prime Minister refused to apologize last night. A spokesman for Mr. Chrétien said the Prime Minister expressed his frustration that the debate has focused on the detention conditions of suspected terrorists instead of the work of the Canadian Forces against terrorism. Mr. Chrétien made his comment even though Deputy Prime Minister John Manley has openly questioned whether the United States is respecting all its obligations under the Geneva Conventions. Numerous international law experts argue that the United States has to hold tribunals to determine whether the prisoners deserve the status of prisoner of war under the terms of the Geneva Conventions - something the United States has refused to do. If the situation is not remedied, and then we continue to hand over prisoners, I think in that case we would be in violation of international law, Mr. Cotler said Wednesday. Mr. Duceppe is asking the Prime Minister to withdraw his remark. I had said at the start of the crisis that the Prime Minister was acting as a statesman, but he has come back to his natural self: He is petty; he has no arguments. During Question Period, Mr. Chrétien went further than some of his ministers in defending the U.S. position, abandoning calls for a clarification from his allies. The Americans have clearly decided to respect the Geneva Conventions, Mr. Chrétien said. Still, politicians from all sides were not favourably impressed with his attack on the Bloc. New Democrat MP Bill Blaikie said that to suggest asking questions on a human-rights issue is somehow supporting terrorism is a form of parliamentary McCarthyism. Canadian Alliance defence critic Leon Benoit, who has dismissed the PoW issue, said Mr. Chrétien's attack on the Bloc is not the kind of statement you expect of a Prime Minister and he should withdraw it. Government House Leader Ralph Goodale tried to take some of the sting out of Mr. Chrétien's outburst. Sometimes things are said in the fury of debate in the House that upon reflection people might want to change, Mr. Goodale told reporters. One of Mr. Chrétien's problems is that some of his backbenchers and cabinet ministers have the same concerns about due process and the application of the Geneva Conventions. Liberal MP John Godfrey was one of the first Canadian politicians to voice those concerns publicly at a committee hearing last month on Canadian participation in Afghan operations. Wednesday, Mr. Godfrey said that overall, the opposition parties, including the Bloc, have asked the same questions of the Chrétien government that he has on the issue of PoWs. He said government ministers are fuzzy in public about the issue because they privately try to persuade U.S. officials to convene proper tribunals. At some point, Canada will have to ask the United States to return the three prisoners captured by Canadian commandos if the federal government fails to persuade the U.S. administration, Mr. Godfrey said. Meanwhile, U.S. forces in Afghanistan were preparing to take possession of as many as 60 Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners held by Afghan forces, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. The number of prisoners in U.S. custody in Afghanistan has stood at 324 for more than a week; there are 158 al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Re: value vs price
on 2/7/02 06:30 AM, Charles Brown at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: value vs price by Devine, James 05 February 2002 19:46 UTC On exploitation, my take is that he noticed that in FACT, throughout history, exploited and oppressed classes struggle against their exploitation and oppression. Opposition to exploitation is a human natural ethical project ; the "is" of history and the "ought" of what is to be done are united in the class struggle of exploited classes. Accepting the FACT of exploitation doesn't autonomatically mean that one should side with the exploited. Many -- including many members of the working class -- have concluded that backing the (currently) winning side is the best strategy. ^ CB: Marx and Engels' theory of historical materialism by which history is understood as a history of class struggles between oppressor and oppressing classes ( nutshelled in _The Manifesto_, but underpinning even _Capital_ and their whole approach) cognizes that every member of every oppressed class is not class conscious all or even most of the time. Note that revolutions are rare occurrences in the total time of history in Marx and Engels schemes. In most of the actual time of history society is not in revolution, and most oppressed workers don't have the consciousness of their class , class consciousness. So, it is normal for there to be many or most of the oppressed class going along to get along, failing in rebellion, fighting each other more than the ruling class, no ? This paradox is implicit in Engels and Marx's approach. If the most of the oppressed classes of history were not confused on the issue of class most of the time , ruling classes couldn't rule, because the latter are always tiny elites oppressing mass majorities. Revolutions are like plate tectonic shifts in geology. They occur rarely , but their potential and tension are constant even through the normal times of small earthquakes ( That's dialectics) So, of course, there are specific moments when groups ,even generations of workers are on the wrong side in the class battles ( Engels wrote of bourgeosification , or something like that, of some British workers). Marxism's founders' writing doesn't make all "what is to be done" decisions easy. Marxists don't claim that. Only those who want to misrepresent Marxism as simplistic claim that sort of "yea, yea, or nay, nay" for Marxism. ^^^ It's not easy to derive a clear and unambiguous "ought" out of an "is." Jim Devine CB: It is true that Marxism is a combination of clarity and ambiguity of concepts that are not clearly defined, i.e. rigid binaries. Part of this is because everything is in motion, even "ethics". This is difficult for all of us because we all have some sense that ethics ,of all things, is a system of eternal , unchanging principles. I say all of us because we all have some influence of metaphysical ethics on us through religion or something; Note that Engels cleverly ( double entendre) in _Anti-Duhring_ uses a quote from Jesus as the main metaphysical ethicist (for the masses in England and Europe then) who thinks in binaries: "yea, yea or nay, nay" ( see below). This is a poetic uniting of an analysis of the "is " and of the "ought" by Engels. ^ "To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. "His communication is 'yea, yea; nay, nay'; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." [Matthew 5:37. $B!=(J Ed.] For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another, cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other. At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound common sense. Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and even necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees. For everyday purposes we know and can say, e.g., whether an animal is alive or not. But, upon closer inquiry, we find that this is, in many
value vs. price
value vs. price by Ian Murray 07 February 2002 01:47 UTC = You're right, there is no new thing under the Sun of Marx. CB: This recurrent theme that the ideas that Marx and Engels developed about 150 years ago MUST be obsolete or old and funky by now is oh so, tiresome. Have Newton's ideas lost all their force because they are so old ? Mere passage of time does not mean the validity of a theory automatically wears out. Anyway, you have heard of Lenin and other Marxists ,no doubt. There are new ideas under the Sun of Marx put forth by that worthy Son of Marx, don't you know. So, the sarcasm is not even based an accurate picture of what many Marxists claim. So, for many Marxists, there has been a development of Marx and Engels ^^^ It's just silly to say ST reduces to KM's stuff and vice versa. Not all non-Marxian social theory is ant-Marxian. Are you arguing for a Marxian monopoly? ^^^ CB: Silly ? How so ? I didn't say systems theory is inherently anti-Marxist, and I implied it might be pro-Marxist in that it seems to be an independent derivation of some aspects of Marx and perhaps Hegel's idea. What I objected to was the claim or use of system's theory to socalled render Marx's value theory superflous. I am arguing that the main social theory for changing the world in 2002 is that of dialectical and historical materialism, or the theory of Marx as developed by Lenin and others since. Social scientists who don't consider themselves Marxists discover empirical generalizations, but they do not develop underlying social theory qua non-Marxists. ( and as non-Marxists, they are most likely to move the underlying social theory backwards). The theory of Marxism will remain the best until capitalism is overthrown. That is not a dogmatic assertion , despite that anti-Marxist love to claim Marxism is dogmatically practiced. It is not dogmatic , but realistic. It is like there is no need for a new theory of the movement of the planets until the Solar system breaks down. That is not dogma, but realism.
Re: New under the Son
Class-consciousness and the fundamentality of value Class-consciousness means awareness of how classes fight for their material survival in society. Classes are delineated in their general features on the basis of one relation to property and property is ownership of things by which the wealth of society is created and reproduced. Ones active or inactive relationship within a system of social production clarifies specific class identification and the dimensions of ownership. Class-consciousness means awareness of how classes fight for their material survival in society. The quantitative and qualitative dimension of how people combine together to fight for material self-interest, serves as an indicators of depth of awareness. This articulation of class-consciousness was more than less impossible twenty years ago, because the specific material boundaries of the limit to value as a force mediating human relations had not been revealed or rather witnessed. When Marx and Engels spoke of the emancipation of the working class being an act of self-emancipation and self-consciousness (overcoming the alienated self), the students of Marx method could not - in the main, transcend the material limitations placed on their own consciousness and converted class concepts into materialist concepts of the abstract alienated self of man - as abstract labor. Every generation encounters ideological molds of thought held in place and reinforced by the sum total of conditions riveted to a specific development in commodity production and the existing quantitative boundary of capital. Under conditions of reform - under conditions where quantitative expansion of capital is occurs, labors act on behalf of the 'self' in demanding and securing a partial reformulation of its share of the social product. In as much as the most organized sector of labor can assert itself in a concerted effort - greater than labor without organization and a voice, self interest was perceived as selfishness by the unorganized mass, unable to secure the equitable share that its organized brothers received. Uuugggh - under conditions of quantitative expansion of capital, in the absence of a war time crisis or defeat the shatters social relations and destabilize sections of the population; when conditions exist for the expansion or alteration of the social contract that stabilize the operation of the productive forces, class consciousness is manifest as an external category of ideology expressed as love for ideological self - abstract labor and hatred for social capital as the expression of hegemonistic domination over things that dominate men. Hegemonistic domination superceded the domination of men through the ownership of things. The impact of exhausting the quantitative stages in the evolution of capital as a historically evolved form of social production reaped havoc on and within the movement seeking to weld the Marx dialectic. Within the imperial countries, the revolutionaries were often confined to condemning the exploitation of the colonies, admitting that super profits were being beaten out of the backs of the colonial workers and sought refuge in sectarian movements, whose sectarianism was enforced by the material limitation of class consciousness. To the degree that rent, price, interest and money appeared as externalized independently existing modes of capital, or rather surplus value, class interest and class self appeared externalized, alienated from the labor movement based on its various components. The articulated self-interest of human labor in the abstract - ideology, assumed what appeared to be a life of its own and ideology was defined on the basis of ideology - itself. Hence, love for ones class and hatred for the enemy. Argentina of course establishes the definitive end of an era of historically induced ideology. Class-consciousness is the act of fighting for ones material survival on the basis of securing the needs for one continuous reproduction and expansion. There is no ideology here. Material survival and expansion means food, clothing, housing, fresh water, library's, theater, transportation, medical care, freedom from political harassment and arbitrariness of authority, artistic and intellectual pursuits. Marx method is found throughout all of his and Engels writings Marx gives a scholarly presentation of the dialect of form and content, externalization and the emergence of independent modes of existence - of interest, rent, price, surplus value, etc in Theories of Surplus Value Part 3, pages 507 last paragraph through 513, Progress Publisher Moscow 1971. How classes fight for their material existence presupposes their existence or position in a system of production founded on distinct property relations. The emerging communist class is that sector of the labor movement with the most unmet needs and was actually defined by Marx in 1843, prior to
RE: Re: Re: LOV and LTV
But Justin, do you accept that what you criticise as being redundant some of us would merely call a labor theory of prices? Justin responds: Not merely. Marx attempted to use value theory to do a lot of work, e.g., as part od [of?] a theory of crisis, as a component of his account of commodity fetishism, as an account of the nature of money, and, of course, as the explanation of profit, exploitation, surplus value, and the rate of these things. That's right: Marx's Law of Value was a component of his account of commodity fetishism, or is rather implied by his whole vision of the capitalist system, which involves commodity fetishism (or the illusions created by competition of volume III). Like Locke before him (who developed a very non-Marxian labor theory of property), money is central to Marx's LoV. The key thing about the LoV is that it applies -- as a true-by-definition accounting system that's an alternative to doing one's accounting in price terms -- for the capitalist system as a whole or to the average capital (abstract capital) representing the system as a whole. However, he correctly started from the premises that to do this work, value had to be quantity with a determinable magnitude, and price is the point of entry into that because value appears as price and profit in the phenonemal world. If value theory breaks down there, it's toast, as Marx also recognized, which is why he and Engels and traditional Marxism were concerned with the transformation problem. It's surplus-value that appears as profit in the phenomenal world, i.e., the world that we perceive rather than the world revealed by applying the acid of abstraction. (It's only Roemer who sees profit as in essence a scarcity price.) But no matter. Marx's concern with the so-called transformation problem (the derivation of values from prices or vice-versa) comes from his early learning from Ricardo. But then he takes the whole issue in a different direction. For Marx, as I read him, the movement from value to price (or price of production) is not mathematical as much as it is one of moving from a high level of abstraction (volume I of CAPITAL) to a lower one (volume III). In volume I, he focused on capital as a whole (as represented by the representative capitalist, Mr. Moneybags), abstracting from the heterogeneity of many capitals and the relationships amongst them. Step-by-step, he brings in aspects of the picture from which he had abstracted, until he gets to volume III, where he deals with how the configurations of capital appear on the surface of society, in the action of different capitals on one another, i.e., in competition, and in the everyday consciousness of the agents of production themselves (from the first page of text in volume III). In this light, the so-called transformation problem should be seen as a disaggregation problem, going from the whole to the heterogeneous parts that make it up. In Marx's thought, the distinction between individual values and individual prices is as important as their unity. (For example, the value produced by money-lenders equals zero in Marx's theory, but they receive revenues: they are paid a price for their services.) The distinction represents the role of heterogeneity of capitals and competition, whereas the unity (represented by his equations total value = total price and total surplus-value = total profits+interest+rent) represents the fact that the heterogeneity and competition take place within a unified whole. (The revenues received by the money-lenders is a deduction from the surplus-value that the industrial capitalists have organized the production of.) In these respect he was more intellectually honest that the latter-day defenders of value theory who want the quantity without being able to determine its measure. to whom are you referring? and what does this mean? It should also be noted that prices are very hard to measure, especially since the quality of diffferent products varies among them and over time. And from the perspective of it being an expanation of exploitation, some of us would say that childen notice there are grossly unfair and inexplicable differences in society. Unlike me, right? I think that all the inequalities that exist are just great. But here you depart from Marxism: Unfair is a charge he would dismissa sa bourgeois whine. As a liberal democrat, I myself think he was wrong about that--I think justice talk is very important--but I find it odd that you insist on orthodoxy in political economy while rejecting Marx's ideologiekritik of morality in general and talk of justice and fairness in particular. Finally, I don't understand why you think you can't explain inequality with value theory. Here's Roemer['s explanation: the bourgeoisie grabbed the means of production by force or acquired them by luck, and used their ill-gotten resources to maintain their unfair advantages. Not a whisper
RE: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism
Fortunately for physics there is an independent determinant of mass, that is gravitational acceleration which, in turn, is determined by the gravitational field. So this provides a way out of this particular circularity. Is it too much to claim that the concepts of labor, labor-power and the historically determined reproduction value of labor serve a similar function in political economy? -Original Message- From: Devine, James [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 10:17 AM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED] ' Subject: [PEN-L:22516] RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism Ian Murray wrote: As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV [sic] has circularities of it's own. what circularities are those? and why is circularity bad, unless there is nothing to the theory but circularities? Physics and geometry, for example, both involve circularities (e.g. force is defined by mass times acceleration, but mass is defined by force/acceleration and acceleration is defined by force/mass). Are you following Blaug to accept Popperian falsification, a criterion that makes _all_ social science (or almost all) worthless? Carrol Cox wrote: I suspect I'm over my head here both re political economy epistemology, or whatever is at stake, But I think I'll butt in anyhow. In _German Ideology_ (I'm paraphrasing from memory) M/E claim they do have premises -- namely, actual living individuals. (Actual living is my insertion to allow for the repudiation of the abstract individual in the Theses on Feurerbach.) in the GI, ME are pretty clear that they're talking about actual living individuals, not abstract ones. I gloss this as affirming that wherever and whenever we find outselves we are already caught up in, constituted by, action (social relations), indepently of which we have no existence. So now the question is how, under given historical conditions, those actual individuals (defined by their social relations at any historical point) allocate their living activity; how do they transform their condition while reproducing it. And I think that starting out there, we get a LOV totally different from (e.g.) Ricardo's, and moreover, the only place to start is with that living human activity, whether or not following it up brings us back to our premises. In other words, we must _either_ hold to some form of LOV as fundamental, or we must place outselves outside of time and space, in a Platonic empyrean, examing the world from outside as Plato attempts to do in the _Republic_. Not only neoclassical but all bourgeois forms of political economy (economics) lead us back either to Plato or to William James's blooming buzzing chaos. (Quote not accurate but makes the point.) that makes sense to me. P.S. A philological note: _G.I._ does not, I think, have any independent validity as a source of Marx's or Engels's thought -- i.e. it is valid (as a source) only as corrected looking backward from their mature work. When used in isolation from or independently of that later work it makes one wish the mice had done a better job of criticism. yes, but the GI and THE THESES ON FEUERBACH present the clearest explanation of ME's materialist conception of history. -- Jim Devine
FW: Re: Re: LOV and LTV
[this was sent by mistake, before I finished it.] But Justin, do you accept that what you criticise as being redundant some of us would merely call a labor theory of prices? Justin responds: Not merely. Marx attempted to use value theory to do a lot of work, e.g., as part od [of?] a theory of crisis, as a component of his account of commodity fetishism, as an account of the nature of money, and, of course, as the explanation of profit, exploitation, surplus value, and the rate of these things. That's right: Marx's Law of Value was a component of his account of commodity fetishism, or is rather implied by his whole vision of the capitalist system, which involves commodity fetishism (or the illusions created by competition of volume III). Like Locke before him (who developed a very non-Marxian labor theory of property), money is central to Marx's LoV. The key thing about the LoV is that it applies -- as a true-by-definition accounting system that's an alternative to doing one's accounting in price terms -- for the capitalist system as a whole or to the average capital (abstract capital) representing the system as a whole. However, he correctly started from the premises that to do this work, value had to be quantity with a determinable magnitude, and price is the point of entry into that because value appears as price and profit in the phenonemal world. If value theory breaks down there, it's toast, as Marx also recognized, which is why he and Engels and traditional Marxism were concerned with the transformation problem. It's surplus-value that appears as profit in the phenomenal world, i.e., the world that we perceive rather than the world revealed by applying the acid of abstraction. (It's only Roemer who sees profit as in essence a scarcity price.) But no matter. Marx's concern with the so-called transformation problem (the derivation of values from prices or vice-versa) comes from his early learning from Ricardo. But then he takes the whole issue in a different direction. For Marx, as I read him, the movement from value to price (or price of production) is not mathematical as much as it is one of moving from a high level of abstraction (volume I of CAPITAL) to a lower one (volume III). In volume I, he focused on capital as a whole (as represented by the representative capitalist, Mr. Moneybags), abstracting from the heterogeneity of many capitals and the relationships amongst them. Step-by-step, he brings in aspects of the picture from which he had abstracted, until he gets to volume III, where he deals with how the configurations of capital appear on the surface of society, in the action of different capitals on one another, i.e., in competition, and in the everyday consciousness of the agents of production themselves (from the first page of text in volume III). In this light, the so-called transformation problem should be seen as a disaggregation problem, going from the whole to the heterogeneous parts that make it up. In Marx's thought, the distinction between individual values and individual prices is as important as their unity. (For example, the value produced by money-lenders equals zero in Marx's theory, but they receive revenues: they are paid a price for their services.) The distinction represents the role of heterogeneity of capitals and competition, whereas the unity (represented by his equations total value = total price and total surplus-value = total profits+interest+rent) represents the fact that the heterogeneity and competition take place within a unified whole. (The revenues received by the money-lenders is a deduction from the surplus-value that the industrial capitalists have organized the production of.) In these respect he was more intellectually honest that the latter-day defenders of value theory who want the quantity without being able to determine its measure. to whom are you referring? and what does this mean? It's quite possible to measure values, though only approximately. But note that even prices can be very hard to measure, especially since the quality of diffferent products varies and the cost of buying something can involve non-monetary or hidden monetary elements. Justin continues ... I don't understand why you think you can't explain inequality with value theory. Here's Roemer['s explanation: the bourgeoisie grabbed the means of production by force or acquired them by luck, and used their ill-gotten resources to maintain their unfair advantages. Not a whisper of value, and so far as it goes a perfectly true, and indeed Marxian explanation. In our old article in ECONMICS PHILOSOPHY, Gary Dymski and I devastated Roemer's theory. He has no explanation of why the capitalists continue to receive profits over time. Blinkered by general equilibrium theory, he presents an equilibrium (i.e., inadequate) theory which cannot explain why the key variable in the story -- the scarcity of capital goods -- persists over time. That is, Roemer's theory doesn't
RE: Re: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism
Re geometry. I think Goedel's paradox tends to refute your statement. Trying to get out of this box, however, has resulted in a tremendous series of advances in mathematics. I was impressed by this in reading a recent popular account of the history of mathematics leading up to the solution of Fermat's last theorem. Re physics. I made an analogy in my earlier email. Here is another F=ma is subsumed by law of the conservation of energy. Physics problems that can be solved with F=ma can all be solved much more generally and elegantly with the Hamiltonian approach to conservation of energy, which is a much more macro description of the problem. In Marx, is the analogy the macro conditions for the equivalence of economic aggregates. -Original Message- From: Justin Schwartz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 10:49 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:22518] Re: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism Ian Murray wrote: As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV [sic] has circularities of it's own. what circularities are those? and why is circularity bad, unless there is nothing to the theory but circularities? Physics and geometry, for example, both involve circularities (e.g. force is defined by mass times acceleration, but mass is defined by force/acceleration and acceleration is defined by force/mass). This is a fundamental confusion. Firstly, you talk only about physics and not geometry. Geometry proceeds from independent axioms and postulates and does not involve circularities. Moreover, the fact that you can rewrite equations like F=ma with different variables on the left side of the equality does not make physics circular. In fact, the variables are implicitly defined in the context of the entire system of equation in which they appear. Are you following Blaug to accept Popperian falsification, a criterion that makes _all_ social science (or almost all) worthless? In defense of Popper, it does not. I am not a Popperian. And Popper was (despite the way he is usually taught) an early discoverer of what is called the Quine-Duhem thesis, that you can hold any proposition true by making appropriate adjustments elsewhere. The unobjecionable point he had tomake about falsificationsim is that a hypothesis sin;t worth much if you threat it as true come what may, amking it absolutely immune to testing. If all of social science is like that, then it is worthless. But that's not what I think of as good social science. I do rather suspect that some of the defenses of value theory one display lately have smacked of this vice, though. jks _ Join the world's largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : Value talk
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 move from the difficulties these backward firms face to a fall in the average rate of profit for capital-as-a-whole. I don't know wwether the rate of profit does tend to fall. This is a vexed empirical question. But I can see an argument based on the above that it might, though it would take some additional assumptions. Justin, It's not a vexed empirical question for Brenner, though Shaikh raises questions about how the capital stock is measured; but for Brenner and Shaikh and Moseley, the rate of profit did fall, and fall hard, esp for Brenner between approx. (if I remember correctly) 65-73 for US capital. Charles has to re-read Perlo; Justin, you have to re-read Brenner! I do think there has been progress in reworking official data from a value perspective (criticism of wage led profit squeeze thesis carried out by Shaikh and Moseley), I have studied Shaikh's work, and I think some of his criticisms are valid, but can be expressed without the value theoretic commitments. I'm an overproductionist a la Brenner myself. That's not the point. The question is whether profit to wage is a proxy for s/v. the answer is no; the data have to be reworked. That required new work by value theoretic Marxists. value theoretic analysis of the role of the interventionist state (Mattick, deBrunhoff), I think you overrate Mattick, though he's not bad. well thanks but I overrate--a peculiar word, I must say--Mattick along with the old Root and Branch collective, Moseley, Shaikh, Tony Smith and even O'Connor (who develops a contrary theory). Michael Perelman makes favorable references to PMSr, so does Robt Lekachman for goodness' sake. I also don't think you need value theory to say what he says. Fisk's The State and Justice makes some of the same points without the value theory. In encouraging a political theorist friend to become a Marxist years ago, I lent her this book; it's good news I suppose that I never got it back. But as I remeber Fisk does not have a theory of state debt as accumulation of fictitious capital. And I have behind me a book by Fisk on Value and Ethics, though I have not read it--it's not about labor value is it? Hasn't Fisk recently written on health care like pen-l's Charlie Andrews? analyses of the world market and unequal exchange (Amin, Bettleheim, Sau, Dussel, Carchedi), This stuff I don't know ell. I should have thrown in Tilla Siegel. value based investigations of the labor process (Tony Smith), You left out Braverman. But I think,a gain, that the argumebts do not require value theory. Tony Smith's arguments are rooted in value theory, so he does not share your estimation. Let's see if we can ask whether his best arguments are free of value theory? attempts to undertand non commodity, fiat and near money (Foley, Gansmann), I don't know this. And I should have added latest book Political Economy of Money and Finance by Makoto Itoh and Costas Lapavitsas and Makoto Itoh and last chapters in the new book by Alfredo Saad Fihlo The Value of Marx: Political Economy for Contemporary Capitalism. And there is some very crystal clear work by Martha Campbell and others in the International Journal of Political Economy. Oh, and I forgot the whole value theoretic analyses of the state (Holloway and Picciotti as well as Williams and Reuten). attempts to understand share capital (Hilferding, Henwood), Henwood's not a value theorist, are you, Doug? Good question. value based phenomenlogical studies of time (Lukacs, Postone), I know Lukacs inside and out, and I think tahtw hile he is abstractly commited to the LTV, his analyses do not presuppose value theory at all. I would answer that Lukacs' analysis is based on the Marxian concept of abstract labor if this is what you mean by abstractly committed. More importantly, Postone's theory is value theoretic through and through, and I would not consider his accomplishment degenerate, unless we mean degenerate in a good way. Haven't read Ben Fine's recent value theoretic critique of human capital theory either. Some and some. On the whole, I stand my my claim. A lot of smart people have used the framework. I don't see that their best work depends on it. Well you should certainly not be stopped from doing your best work on a value free theoretical orientation based on some combination of Marx, Robinson and Brenner, and Ian of course is free to develop his own theoretical orienation on the basis of the viewpoints that he is trying to put together which seem to be united in only aspect--they are not value theoretic. Yet some of us will stick to value theoretic Marxism because we
RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: His torical Materialism
Martin, could you please explain these points in greater detail? Martin Brown writes: Re geometry. I think Goedel's paradox tends to refute your [Justin's??] statement. ... which statement? and how does Goedel do so? Re physics. I made an analogy in my earlier email. Here is another F=ma is subsumed by law of the conservation of energy. Physics problems that can be solved with F=ma can all be solved much more generally and elegantly with the Hamiltonian approach to conservation of energy, which is a much more macro description of the problem. In Marx, is the analogy the macro conditions for the equivalence of economic aggregates. by the last, do you mean the total value = total price and total surplus-value = total profits+interest+rent conditions? Jim Devine
Re: Re: LOV and LTV
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 theory are more than possible). Chris Burford Not at all Chris. I was suggesting that my definition was limited, in need of supplmentation because it did not capture the meanings on which you are rightly focused. Rakesh
Re: RE: Re: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: His torical Materialism
Brown, Martin - ARP (NCI) wrote: Re geometry. I think Goedel's paradox tends to refute your statement. are you talking about justin's statement that geometry does not involve circularities and proceeds by axiomatic enumeration? if so, why do you think gödel's theorem (i presume you are referring to the incompleteness theorem?) refutes that statement? i fail to see why the fact that arithmetic is not recursively axiomatizable is a demonstration of circularity... please explain, especially since this position conflicts with your (what i read as correct) response of pointing to the lack of circularity claimed in jim devine's post. --ravi
Re: Re: Re: LOV and LTV
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. This is what I meant yesterday by debt and wages as the terms of capital depreciation. Well that's not what I mean since I still don't understand what you are saying. If I were being polemical, I might ask how you know that money always distorts value if you have no other measure of it. What's the problem? It seems to me that you accept that what is the reference to that? as a first principle, based on the existential description of class antagonism. But I wonder if this distortion always takes the same shape: is the value produced by the LA Lakers distorted in the same way as that by the workers who prep and clean the Staples center? I don't think so, although you could argue that what's being distorted is the snalt, not subjective labor time. Wage differences (like wages themselves), you might say, express this distortion. But then you're left explaining how Shaq's and Kobe's wages, as representations of surplus value/snalt are only in _appearance_ (since that's what wages are) different from those of the staff at Staples--in principle, they really aren't different; there's still extraction of surpl! us! value;, it just looks like they have better lives because their are multimillionaires. Then what? Christian
Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 9:27 AM Subject: [PEN-L:22533] RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities Assuming that ETIR refers to ECONOMIC THEORY IN RETROSPECT, I don't own a copy. Could you please give one example? I don't see why we're at an impasse regarding this issue if you could provide an example. -- JD Yes it's that book. When you wrote: I wrote: If I remember correctly, Robinson interpreted Marx's law of value as a Ricardian labor theory of price. Given that assumption (i.e., that the point of values was to explain price), _of course_ she should have rejected it. That's an important reason to reject that misinterpretation, the basis of almost all criticisms of Marx's heuristic. (Weirdly, that misinterpretation is shared both by most critics of Marx's law of value and also by many fundamentalists. They then feed each others' misconceptions.) I took this to mean that the quest to get a price theory out of KM's theory of value was a mistake. In quoting KM I was pointing to that section of Capital which seems to be what led many commentators to start their explorations of the causal relationship[s], if any, between values and prices. Since those relationships are empirical they are in constant conjunction, issues of non-equilibrium, non-linearity, convergence and divergence aside, no? If they're not in constant conjunction how can any quantitative model even get started to track the dynamics so that the results can serve as data in need of explanation? To that extent KM was caught up in Ricardo's quest for an invariance condition/measure for the theory of value. So if the LoV and or LTV are true by definition how can we even get to the empirical realm for the sake of testing, let alone confirming or refuting the entailments--correlations of values/prices-- unless auxiliary concepts are invoked? If on the other hand they are not apriori, as KM insisted they weren't, then all non-equivalent entailments [specific models] regarding the quantitative correlations between values and prices points to problems with the terms by which the LoV and LTV are defined because the auxiliary concepts would be superfluous in facilitating understanding of the correlations. To then say that the definitions are non-revisable and indispensable because they're apriori is to argue in a circle because then we would need to show why every set of auxiliary concepts used to facilitate the correlation of entailments leads to both models that are equivalent and models that aren't. If we say the problems are with the auxiliary concepts then we're back to saying either the LoV and LTV are a priori and the attempt to get a causal model of value/price correlations is moot; so we're back, again, to what does the LoV and LTV explain? Ian
RE: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: His torical Materialism
-Original Message- From: Devine, James [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 1:53 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: [PEN-L:22544] RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: His torical Materialism Martin, could you please explain these points in greater detail? Martin Brown writes: Re geometry. I think Goedel's paradox tends to refute your [Justin's??] statement. ... which statement? and how does Goedel do so? I'm not great mathematician, but I think that Goedel says that geometry and many other sub-fields of mathematics, are, in some sense, circular, because they are not reducible to a set of primitive fundamentals that are in some sense self evidently true. If you wish there is always some degree of arbitrayness in these foundations. A lot of mathematical progress has been made by trying to get around these limitations by expanding mathematical logic to ever wider domains. Geometry to algebraic geometry to abstract geometry to topology, etc. Re physics. I made an analogy in my earlier email. Here is another F=ma is subsumed by law of the conservation of energy. Physics problems that can be solved with F=ma can all be solved much more generally and elegantly with the Hamiltonian approach to conservation of energy, which is a much more macro description of the problem. In Marx, is the analogy the macro conditions for the equivalence of economic aggregates. by the last, do you mean the total value = total price and total surplus-value = total profits+interest+rent conditions? Yes, sorry, should have been more specific. However, these are only meant to be analogies. I don't think there is any kind of necessary conceptual isomorphy between physics and economics. Jim Devine
Bits and pieces on Iraq
Powell tells Congress there must be regime change in Iraq Thu Feb 7,10:29 AM ET WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell says the United States might have to act alone to bring about a regime change in Iraq. Powell told House members Wednesday that President George W. Bush is considering the most serious set of options one might imagine for dealing with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Regime change is something the United States might have to do alone, Powell said. How to do it? I would not like to go into the details of the options. But he said Bush is examining a full range of options. On Thursday, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters that Bush has not decided on a course of action. A freshly announced trip by Vice President Dick Cheney next month to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and Kuwait all of which border Iraq raised questions about whether Cheney would seek on that tour to build support for making Iraq the next target of Bush's war on terrorism. No, I would not urge you to reach that conclusion, Fleischer said. The vice president is going to represent the president on a wide variety of issues, but the president has not made any determination to quote, unquote go into Iraq, Fleischer said. In his State of the Union address last week, Bush named Iraq as part of an axis of evil along with Iran and North Korea. Questioned at the House International Relations Committee hearing, Powell said United Nations inspectors must have an unfettered right to conduct long-term searches in Iraq for suspect weapons sites and that Bush is leaving no stone unturned as to what the United States might do if Saddam continues to resist inspection. Many analysts, both inside and outside the U.S. government, suspect Iraq is trying to develop long-range missiles, biological and chemical weapons and possible nuclear devices as well. Powell said U.S. intelligence has concluded that Iraq was unlikely to develop a nuclear weapon within a year or shortly thereafter. We still believe strongly in regime change in Iraq, and we look forward to the day when a democratic, representative government at peace with its neighbors leads Iraq to rejoin the family of nations, he said. Bush has denounced Iraq as part of an axis of evil that includes Iran and North Korea countries developing weapons of mass destruction as well. Powell dismissed an Iraqi offer to hold talks with the United Nations, an overture conveyed through the Arab League and accepted by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Powell said Iraq had to accept the return of accept U.N. inspectors, and that there was nothing to discuss otherwise. By contrast, Powell said the Bush administration was open to reasonable conversation with Iran. Powell said the United States had a long-standing list of grievances with Iran, including its support for terrorism and trying to send weapons to the Palestinians. ++ Arabs Seen Rebuffing Cheney on Targeting Iraq Thu Feb 7,11:53 AM ET By Alistair Lyon, Middle East Diplomatic Correspondent LONDON (Reuters) - Arab leaders will give U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney a generally stony reception if he uses his Middle Eastern tour in March to seek support for a war on Iraq. Kuwait, victim of a 1990 Iraqi invasion, might welcome U.S. military action to oust Saddam Hussein and remove one link in what President Bush calls an axis of evil. In other Arab capitals, officials and analysts say, Cheney may get a terse response: Don't expect our help on Iraq while you back Israel's ever harsher repression of the Palestinians. Israel, which since the September 11 attacks on the United States has basked in American sympathy for its struggle with the Palestinians, will want to discuss perceived threats from Iraq, Iran -- also part of Bush's evil axis -- and maybe Syria. NATO-member Turkey harbors deep misgivings about any effort to topple Saddam, but may have little choice but to play along if its superpower ally is bent on regime change in Baghdad. Cheney will try to get Arab backing for a strike on Iraq, but it will be very hard to convince Arab leaders, said Emad Gad of Cairo's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. There has been widespread speculation that Iraq could be the next target of the war on terrorism after the U.S.-led campaign that toppled Afghanistan's Taliban protectors of Osama bin Laden, main suspect for the attacks on New York and Washington. Cheney, on his first trip abroad since September 11, will make stops in 11 countries, including Israel and four states bordering Iraq -- Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and Kuwait -- to discuss the Bush administration's war on global terrorism. ARAFAT FROZEN OUT Mary Matalin, a top Cheney aide, said on Wednesday he had no plans to visit the Palestinian territories or see Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. It's not a peace process trip, she said. That, for many Arab leaders including America's traditional allies in the
RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: His torical Materialism
Yes, I guess I was supporting Jim in saying that it is not true that kind of economic theories under discussion are any more circular than geometry. Physics is less circular than the F=ma account Jim gave but I think good political economy can resemble the more holistic description of physics of my response. In the end it might be said that physics gets into some circularity when you get to problems of how to interpret the meaning of quantum mechanics at the microlevel and the problem of complexity at the macro level, but my point is that there has been a tremendous expansion of knowledge in the effort to get out from under the problem of circularity. In the example of quantum mechanics, Bohr and others started out using the complementary principle and energy conservation that made quantum mechanical computations dependent on thier agreement with classical physics for high quantum numbers. Getting out from under this circularity necessitated the discovery by DeBroglie and Schrodinger of the wave model of matter, the wave equation and imaginary (in the mathematical sense) quantum operators. This worked great for explaining the electronic structure of atoms but resulted in intractible problems of interpretation for the behavior of free electrons. Getting out of this box necessitated the concept of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and wave-particle duality. This raised problems about quantum collapse, an issue that is still being struggle with today, etc. But enough about physics. -Original Message- From: ravi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 1:57 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:22545] Re: RE: Re: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: His torical Materialism Brown, Martin - ARP (NCI) wrote: Re geometry. I think Goedel's paradox tends to refute your statement. are you talking about justin's statement that geometry does not involve circularities and proceeds by axiomatic enumeration? if so, why do you think gödel's theorem (i presume you are referring to the incompleteness theorem?) refutes that statement? i fail to see why the fact that arithmetic is not recursively axiomatizable is a demonstration of circularity... please explain, especially since this position conflicts with your (what i read as correct) response of pointing to the lack of circularity claimed in jim devine's post. --ravi
Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities
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). He was interested in showing, contra Malthus, the formation of an average rate of profit not only does not contradict the law of value its magnitude can in fact be explained on the basis of surplus social labor time extracted by the capitalist class from the working class. Marx criticizes Ricardo for taking an average rate of profit as a given and then attempting to save the law of value in spite of it. This led to disaster in the works of Ricardo's followers (MacCullough, sp.?). Marx attempts to develop the average rate of profit and thereby the price of production step by step out of the law of value itself. But this conceptual development has unforseen consequences: it turns out the proletariat is exploited as a class by the bourgeoisie as a class. For expressed in this thing--the price of production--is the growing antagonism between the two major classes, an antagonism raised to the level of society as a whole. This is obviously not a price theory, but a theory of revolutionary social contradictions which can be grasped by the working masses. And this is why there will be no retreat from attacks on Marx's so called transformation procedure; the stakes are much too high. There is also a further development of the SNALT, as Mattick Jr has pointed out. Price of production is of course a transformation of value, for we find that in a bourgeois society, no commodity is produced unless capitals can receive (tendentially) the average rate of profit by doing so. The price of the production is a socially necessary condition for its supply. That the social labor time that a commodity has to represent is given by price of production rather than its value reveals capital as a collective social power, as each capitalist participates proportionally in the total social capital which as Marx wryly observed makes communists out of the capitalists. But at the same time Marx is clear that prices at best oscillate around these prices of production because every step towards the equalisation of profit rates is disrupted by a step away. In quoting KM I was pointing to that section of Capital which seems to be what led many commentators to start their explorations of the causal relationship[s], if any, between values and prices. Yes the causal relationship is that non wage income is limited by the surplus social labor time extracted from the working class as a class in the process of production, though of course not all value and surplus value will be necessarily realized due to disproportionalities, underconsumptionism being one form thereof. Since those relationships are empirical they are in constant conjunction, issues of non-equilibrium, non-linearity, convergence and divergence aside, no? If they're not in constant conjunction how can any quantitative model even get started to track the dynamics so that the results can serve as data in need of explanation? well what's wrong with Marx's simple transformation tables. They show how the value extracted from the working class (v+s) can be distributed in such a way as to erase from bourgeois consciousness the collective exploitation of the working class and give rise to the fetishism of capital. Samuelson's eraser theorem is the correlative of the fetishism of capital. To that extent KM was caught up in Ricardo's quest for an invariance condition/measure for the theory of value. Please Ian, Marx spends pages arguing that Ricardo's quest was bound for failure, though as a purely methodological device in his theory he assumes the constant value of money, thereby ensuring that all changes in price happen on the commodity--rather than the money--side of the equation. Rakesh
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities
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? I could understand if you were using the theory to predict the ultimate implosion of capitalism, as the OCC approaches infinity and the ROP approaches zero. But people don't seem to do that any more. It seems to me that it's somehow a symbolic battle over orthodoxy, with the rejecters using their rejection to advertise their rejection of orthodoxy, and the defenders using it as a badge of loyalty. Aside from advertising these affiliation, what's the point? Doug
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities
- Original Message - From: Rakesh Bhandari [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 11:48 AM Subject: [PEN-L:22551] Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities So Ian seems to have taken Blaug's word for it. == No I didn't Ian
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities
It's because of the male fetish of obstinacy :-) It's precisely why Justin, myself and others have been in the so what camp for years. The mere fact that the debate is interminable should count against those who want to cling to the carcass. Ian - Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 12:00 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22552] Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities 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? I could understand if you were using the theory to predict the ultimate implosion of capitalism, as the OCC approaches infinity and the ROP approaches zero. But people don't seem to do that any more. It seems to me that it's somehow a symbolic battle over orthodoxy, with the rejecters using their rejection to advertise their rejection of orthodoxy, and the defenders using it as a badge of loyalty. Aside from advertising these affiliation, what's the point? Doug
Fw: [] !
Hi Does anybody know how I can stop these posts. What are they Karl - Original Message - From: ¿ì¸®¾Æ±â´åÄÄ [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 8:03 AM Subject: [±¤°í]¿ì¸®¾Æ±â Àß Å°¿ì±â¸¦ À§ÇÑ Á¤Á¤´ç´çÇÑ »çÀÌÆ® ¿ÀÇ ¾È³» ! ::¢¯i¢¬R¨ú¨¡¡¾a¢¥aAA:: E¢¬¢¯©ª¡Æ¢®AOA¨¬ ©ö¡ì¡¤a¨ù¡©¨¬n¨ö¨¬ CO¢¥I¢¥U. Safety 1st / ¨¬¨¢A? / ¡¾aAu¡¾I AOAu¡Æ¢® ¨¡C¢¬A ¢¥UCa!! ¢¯i¢¬R¨ú¨¡¡¾a A©¬ A¡Æ¢¯i¡¾a¢¬| A¡×CN A¡Æ¨ú¨¡ AAAUA¡ÀCu ¨ùiCI¢¬o ¢¯i¢¬R¨ú¨¡¡¾a¢¥aAA ¡¾©ö©ø¡í AOAu¡Æ¢® ¨¡C¢¬A ¨öCCoA¡í A¡×CN AO¡ÆiA©÷AC ¢¬¢ÒAI¢¬RAo ¨ùiCI¢¬o ¢¯i¢¬R¨ú¨¡¡¾a¢¥aAA AUA¨Ï¢¬¡Æ ¡Æi¡¾¨Cu(¨öACu SC-2000) AOAu¡Æ¢® ¨¡C¢¬A¢¥UCa !! ¡Æi¡Æ¢¥¢¥O¢¯¢®¡ÆO Ca¢Òo¨ú©ªAI ¨¬¡í ¢¬¨AIA¡í ¨¬¢¬©ø¡í¡ÆO ¥ìC¨ù¡© ¡íc¡Æu¥ìa¢¬©ø¢¥I¢¥U. ¨¬¡í ¢¬¨AIA¨¬ E¡ì¨¬¢¬¢¬¨AI¡¤I¨ù¡© ¢¯i¢¬R¨ú¨¡¡¾a¢¥aAA open ¨úE©ø¡í¢¬| A¡×CI¢¯¨Ï ¨¬¢¬©ø¡íAo¢¥A 1E¢¬¨ù¨¬ ¢¬¨AIAO¢¥I¢¥U. ¨¬¡í ¢¬¨AIA¡í ¢¯©ªCIAo ¨úEA¢¬¨öA¢¬e E¢¬¨öA¢¬¨AIA¡í ¨¬¢¬©ø¡íAO¨öA¡ÆA©ø¨£ ¨ú¨¡¡¤¢®AC ¨ùo¨öA¡ÆA¨¬I¢¬| ¢¥¨Ï¢¬¡Ì¨öA¢¬e ¢¥o AI¡íoA¨¬ ¨¬¢¬©ø¡í¨úiAoAo ¨úE¨öA¢¥I¢¥U. ¢ÒCCN ¡Æi¡Æ¢¥¢¥OAC ¢¬¨AI AO¨ùO¢¥A ¡ÆO¨öA¨¡C¢¯¢®¨ù¡© A©¬Aa¥ìC¨úiA©ª ¡ÆIAI¢¬c, ¢¬¨AIAO¨ùO ¢¯UAC A¢´¨¬¢¬¢¥A ¡Æ¢®Ao¡Æi AOAo ¨úE¨öA¢¥I¢¥U. ¡Æ¡§¡ícCO¢¥I¢¥U. Copyright ¡§I 2001, ¢¯i¢¬R¨ú¨¡¡¾a¢¥aAA all rights reserved
LOV and LTV
LOV and LTV by Justin Schwartz 07 February 2002 06:13 UTC CB: What's the difference between a lawful explanation and a lawlike explanation ? ( no fuzzy answers) The explanations invoked in physics are lawful, i.e., they use preciselt formulated lawsto generate specific (if sometimes probabilistic) predictions. ^^ CB: Of course, admitting probablism admits the very fuzziness that this old superiority complex of hard sciences claims is its superiority to soft social science. Not at all. With quantum probabilities you can predict values down to as many decimal places as you care to write. Quantum is not riddled with exceptions and ceteris paribus clauses. ^ CB: Are you saying that probablistic laws are not fuzzier than laws that are more definitive ? The laws of physics are formulated with plenty of exceptions. Take the first law of Newton and Galilei as presented by Einstein below. The clause removed sufficiently far from other bodies is a ceteris paribus clause and implies exceptions to the law ( i.e. when the body is not removed sufficiently from other bodies there is an exception). Then his whole discussion about the fixed stars etc. , is one big exception. Albert Einstein (1879*1955). Relativity: The Special and General Theory. 1920. IV. The Galileian System of Co-ordinates AS is well known, the fundamental law of the mechanics of Galilei-Newton, which is known as the law of inertia, can be stated thus: A body removed sufficiently far from other bodies continues in a state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line. This law not only says something about the motion of the bodies, but it also indicates the reference-bodies or systems of co-ordinates, permissible in mechanics, which can be used in mechanical description. The visible fixed stars are bodies for which the law of inertia certainly holds to a high degree of approximation. Now if we use a system of co-ordinates which is rigidly attached to the earth, then, relative to this system, every fixed star describes a circle of immense radius in the course of an astronomical day, a result which is opposed to the statement of the law of inertia. So that if we adhere to this law we must refer these motions only to systems of co-ordinates relative to which the fixed stars do not move in a cir! cle. A system of co-ordinates of which the state of motion is such that the law of inertia holds relative to it is called a Galileian system of co-ordinates. The laws of the mechanics of Galilei-Newton can be regarded as valid only for a Galileian system of co-ordinates. Physics is now a contradictory unity of extreme precision and extreme fuzziness, just as a dialectics of nature might have expected. What are you talking about? ^^ CB: I'd say for something to be uncertain in principle is extreme fuzziness. Or what exactly and precisely do you take fuzziness to be ? And then Ian has mentioned some of the imaginings of recent physics whereby , for example, a sort of shadow Napoleon still exists somewhere. That's pretty fuzzy. On the most charir=table interpretation of laws in social science, any lawlike generalizations that exist are not like this. CB: Naw. I overcame my social science inferority complex to physical sciences long ago. It's not superiority/inferiority thing, it's just different. CB: If its not superiority/inferiority why would you be talking about being charitable ? We don't need your generalization charity. Our generalizations are very powerful and useful in practice. Your claim that there are no lawlike generalizations in social science is a sort of echoing of physical science arrogance and an expression of an inferiority complex by social scientists. There are plenty of literally LAWlike generalizations in social science , as you should be aware of now that you are learning more about the law. For example, marriage in the U.S. is endogamous with respect to race. That is generally true LIKE it is generally true that most people obey the law against murder. It should be clear that I have just given you a lawlike generalization in social science. We can use it to predict, although it will be a probablistic prediction. ^^^ This won't fly anymore with us social scientists. I'm a Michigan=trained socisl scientists myself, Charles--my PhD is joint polisci and philosophy. ^^ CB: So you should be well aware of the validity of what I am saying. At any rate, it is mostly social scientists who have the inferiority complex I have discovered ( in a little bit of social scientific generalizing about social science that I did myself). For example , I recall Michael Perelman discussing economics' envy of physics in the first book of his I read. (Can't recall the name). Many efforts at reductionism are per se social science envy. Projects that reduce psychology to biochemistry partake of this envy.
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities
Doug wrote: 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 is highly correlated with the question I was asking to myself Doug: What is the purpose of this debate? Here is my purpose: My purpose is to help change the world, for myself and all the rest, for the better, where I leave better undefined. And I want this because what I observe is awful. Also, as Khauldun had observed on WSN a while ago, I want to help change the world not because I read the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engles but because I know that I am and majority of the rest are screwed up by the system. I also know that to help change it, I need to understand it well (which I also leave vague). So I would have liked it more if the participants relate this theoretical debate to its implications for changing the world. Lastly, I know that I cannot change the world alone. Best, Sabri
Historical Materialism
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 book.Wall Street, that value theory would make substantive improvements on? well, we have it from very wise people that you can't begin to understand or explain capitalism without value theory, we're stucvk at the level of mere ecletic phenomenal static description. Sorry, Doug. jks ^^^ CB: Actually, you can begin to explain capitalism without value theory, you just can't get anywhere near finishing explaining it without value theory. Isn't value theory a premise of Doug's book ?
Re: RE: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: His tor icalMaterialism
Martin Brown writes: Re geometry. I think Goedel's paradox tends to refute your [Justin's??] statement. ... which statement? and how does Goedel do so? I'm not great mathematician, but I think that Goedel says that geometry and many other sub-fields of mathematics, are, in some sense, circular, because they are not reducible to a set of primitive fundamentals that are in some sense self evidently true. That's not what logicians means by circularity. G's theorem is as I have explained here before) that for any formal system that is powerful enough to state simple arithemaetic, there is at least one true proposition in that system that is not provable within it. E.g., for arithemetric, you need set theory, etc. There is no implication of circularity, which is a matter of defining term A in terms of term B and vice versa. I met G and spoke to him when he was at the Institute and I was a Tigertown undergrad . . . . jks _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
Re: Historical Materialism
- Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 1:45 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22558] Historical Materialism 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 book.Wall Street, that value theory would make substantive improvements on? well, we have it from very wise people that you can't begin to understand or explain capitalism without value theory, we're stucvk at the level of mere ecletic phenomenal static description. Sorry, Doug. jks ^^^ CB: Actually, you can begin to explain capitalism without value theory, you just can't get anywhere near finishing explaining it without value theory. === What do you mean by finishing explaining capitalism? Is there one true way to explain capitalism? Have we transcended Q-D in political economy? Ian
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities
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 the roof fell in. Rakesh wouldn't even let me back out of a discussion that (to be frank) doesn't interest me much. I did spend some time on value theoey, came to the conclusions I've had to adumbrate here, and never even wrote much on it because it was evident to be that the only pepople who werereally interestedw ere the true believers, and I wasn't going to persuade _them_. So, I agree, it's not that important. I could understand if you were using the theory to predict the ultimate implosion of capitalism, as the OCC approaches infinity and the ROP approaches zero. But people don't seem to do that any more. My point exactly. It seems to me that it's somehow a symbolic battle over orthodoxy, with the rejecters using their rejection to advertise their rejection of orthodoxy, and the defenders using it as a badge of loyalty. Aside from advertising these affiliation, what's the point? Quite right. And I don't mean to advertising. The discussion came about as I have explained. jks _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: Historical Materialism
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 book.Wall Street, that value theory would make substantive improvements on? well, we have it from very wise people that you can't begin to understand or explain capitalism without value theory, we're stucvk at the level of mere ecletic phenomenal static description. Sorry, Doug. jks ^^^ CB: Actually, you can begin to explain capitalism without value theory, you just can't get anywhere near finishing explaining it without value theory. Isn't value theory a premise of Doug's book ? Doug thinks Marx was an underconsumptionist; at the same Doug subscribes to the wage led profit squeeze thesis. Doug's an eclectic. Doug's hostility to value theory derives in part from his rejection of the significance of the Yaffe, Shaikh, Perlo, and Moseley finding that despite the so called wage led squeeze on profits, s/v has had a tendency to rise throughout. Doug thinks his theory is radical because it imlies that since the working class had the ability to choke the profitability of the working class it may have the power to overthrow the capitalist class. But there are empirical problems with the wage squeeze theory raised by Fred and others, and I don't think Doug has even recognized them. And I won't here get into why the implications are not as politically radical as Doug thinks. Moreover, that capital accumulation depends on a rising s/v does in fact disclose the limits of this mode of production since as greater difficulties are faced in raising the rate of exploitation, the system comes to itself depend on convulsive crises by which as a result of the destruction and devaluation of capital the value composition of capital can be readjusted to the rate of exploitation such that accumulation can resumed and the realization of surplus value thereby ensured. On the basis of value theory, it is clarified that the capitalist way out of crises is not putting more purchasing power in the hands of workers or simply increasing the rate of exploitation. If the system as a whole cannot be put right even through a protracted crisis, then one capital survives ever more only at the expense of another, yielding slaughterous destruction in the world market and the political tensions to what gives rise. Barbarism or socialism. RB
Re: value vs. price
- Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 9:34 AM Subject: [PEN-L:22536] value vs. price value vs. price by Ian Murray 07 February 2002 01:47 UTC = You're right, there is no new thing under the Sun of Marx. CB: This recurrent theme that the ideas that Marx and Engels developed about 150 years ago MUST be obsolete or old and funky by now is oh so, tiresome. Have Newton's ideas lost all their force because they are so old ? Mere passage of time does not mean the validity of a theory automatically wears out. == I've yet to mention whether M E are obsolete so you're wrestling with a straw man. Anyway, you have heard of Lenin and other Marxists ,no doubt. There are new ideas under the Sun of Marx put forth by that worthy Son of Marx, don't you know. So, the sarcasm is not even based an accurate picture of what many Marxists claim. So, for many Marxists, there has been a development of Marx and Engels ^^^ It's just silly to say ST reduces to KM's stuff and vice versa. Not all non-Marxian social theory is ant-Marxian. Are you arguing for a Marxian monopoly? ^^^ CB: Silly ? How so ? I didn't say systems theory is inherently anti-Marxist, and I implied it might be pro-Marxist in that it seems to be an independent derivation of some aspects of Marx and perhaps Hegel's idea. What I objected to was the claim or use of system's theory to socalled render Marx's value theory superflous. === I never said ST rendered value theory superfluous. I am arguing that the main social theory for changing the world in 2002 is that of dialectical and historical materialism, or the theory of Marx as developed by Lenin and others since. Social scientists who don't consider themselves Marxists discover empirical generalizations, but they do not develop underlying social theory qua non-Marxists. ( and as non-Marxists, they are most likely to move the underlying social theory backwards). The theory of Marxism will remain the best until capitalism is overthrown. That is not a dogmatic assertion , despite that anti-Marxist love to claim Marxism is dogmatically practiced. It is not dogmatic , but realistic. It is like there is no need for a new theory of the movement of the planets until the Solar system breaks down. That is not dogma, but realism. What would constitute a proof or disproof of your claim? No one has made any assertions of dogma. The issue is that defenders of value theory are using a non-Marxian theory of theory change and preservation to defray the claim that some hypotheses within the theory do not have the explanatory power they claim for themselves. In the very act of denying the claim you are engaging the use of a theory external to KM's so you are in a situation equivalent to the one defenders of ortho PE make. Again, how to move beyond skepticism and the 'so what' stage so we can proffer explanations that are accessible to citizens and workers as to why capitalism produces unfreedom, injustice anti-democratic social formations of institutional and technological choice in an open and uncertain world and do not bog them down in disputes that are ultimately irrelevant to the real challenges before usIf we told our fellow citizens that to replace capitalism they must understand value theory what do you think they'd say? Ian
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises,Circularities
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 the roof fell in. Rakesh wouldn't even let me back out of a discussion that (to be frank) doesn't interest me much. I did spend some time on value theoey, came to the conclusions I've had to adumbrate here, and never even wrote much on it because it was evident to be that the only pepople who werereally interestedw ere the true believers, and I wasn't going to persuade _them_. So, I agree, it's not that important. A contemptuous comment. You're not persuading us not because we are true believers but because your reasons (redundancy, transformation problem) are not as strong as you think they are. Rakesh
RE: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities
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? I can't speak for those folks, since my mind-reading ability has evaporated, but the reason why I think value (i.e., one of the key concepts of Marx's CAPITAL) is important because I think that it's a central component in the kind of alternative research program that's needed to counteract and ultimately overthrow the hegemony of the neoclassical orthodoxy (and the orthodoxies of other social sciences). I agree that books like WALL STREET can do an excellent job without using value, but that's only describing a piece of the whole (and using concepts that Marx developed, partly using value). I'm sure many excellent books like that will be written in the future without using value explicitly, but I think that it's important to building the alternative research program to have a constant cross-pollination between the high-theory level (dialectics, value, etc.) and the more empirical level (WALL STREET, etc.)The more-empirical works can benefit from more philosophical reflection or more-theoretical analysis, just as the high theorists can and should learn from doing empirical work and from confronting the ideal nature of abstract concepts with heterogeneity (the down and dirtiness) of the real world. Both types of analysis can gain from learning the limitations of their perspectives. Jim D.
Re: [PEN-L:22555] Fw: [±¤°í]¿ì¸®¾Æ±â Àß Å°¿ì±â¸¦ À§ÇÑ Á¤Á¤´ç´çÇÑ »çÀÌÆ® ¿ÀÇ ¾È³» !
I get one or two each day. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 2:23 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22565] RE: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities 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? I can't speak for those folks, since my mind-reading ability has evaporated, but the reason why I think value (i.e., one of the key concepts of Marx's CAPITAL) is important because I think that it's a central component in the kind of alternative research program that's needed to counteract and ultimately overthrow the hegemony of the neoclassical orthodoxy (and the orthodoxies of other social sciences). I agree that books like WALL STREET can do an excellent job without using value, but that's only describing a piece of the whole (and using concepts that Marx developed, partly using value). I'm sure many excellent books like that will be written in the future without using value explicitly, but I think that it's important to building the alternative research program to have a constant cross-pollination between the high-theory level (dialectics, value, etc.) and the more empirical level (WALL STREET, etc.)The more-empirical works can benefit from more philosophical reflection or more-theoretical analysis, just as the high theorists can and should learn from doing empirical work and from confronting the ideal nature of abstract concepts with heterogeneity (the down and dirtiness) of the real world. Both types of analysis can gain from learning the limitations of their perspectives. Jim D. A great post. Below is our real problem. How would we fare with such a disputant? In recent years, protectionism has also manifested itself in a somewhat different guise by challenging the moral roots of capitalism and globalization. At the risk of oversimplification, I would separate the differing parties in that debate into three groups. First, there are those who believe that relatively unfettered capitalism is the only economic organization consistent with individual and political freedom. In a second group are those who accept capitalism as the only practical means to achieve higher standards of living but who are disturbed by the seeming incivility of many market practices and outcomes. In very broad brush terms, the prevalence with which one encounters allegations of incivility defines an important difference in economic views that distinguishes the United States from continental Europe -- two peoples having deeply similar roots in political freedom and democracy. A more pronounced distinction separates both of these groups from a third group, which views societal organization based on the profit motive and corporate culture as fundamentally immoral. This group questions in particular whether the distribution of wealth that results from greater economic interactions among countries is, in some sense, fair. Here terms such as exploitation, subversion of democratic choice, and other value-charged notions dominate the debate. These terms too often substitute for a rigorous discussion of the difficult tradeoffs we confront in advancing the economic welfare of our nations. Such an antipathy to corporate culture has sent tens of thousands into the streets to protest what they see as exploitive capitalism in its most visible form -- the increased globalization of our economies. Though presumably driven by a desire to foster a better global society, most protestors hold misperceptions about how markets work and how to interpret market outcomes. To be sure, those outcomes can sometimes appear perverse to the casual observer. In today's marketplace, for example, baseball players earn much more than tenured professors. But that discrepancy expresses the market fact that more people are willing to pay to see a ball game than to attend a college lecture. I may not personally hold the same relative valuation of those activities as others, but that is what free markets are about. They reflect and give weight to the values of the whole of society, not just those of any one segment. [Alan Greenspan] http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2001/20011203/default.htm
RE: Re: RE: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: His tor ical Materialism
Yes I agree with you about math. I just don't agree that the simpler kind of circularity applies to political economy in the way you claim. -Original Message- From: Justin Schwartz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 4:56 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:22559] Re: RE: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: His tor ical Materialism Martin Brown writes: Re geometry. I think Goedel's paradox tends to refute your [Justin's??] statement. ... which statement? and how does Goedel do so? I'm not great mathematician, but I think that Goedel says that geometry and many other sub-fields of mathematics, are, in some sense, circular, because they are not reducible to a set of primitive fundamentals that are in some sense self evidently true. That's not what logicians means by circularity. G's theorem is as I have explained here before) that for any formal system that is powerful enough to state simple arithemaetic, there is at least one true proposition in that system that is not provable within it. E.g., for arithemetric, you need set theory, etc. There is no implication of circularity, which is a matter of defining term A in terms of term B and vice versa. I met G and spoke to him when he was at the Institute and I was a Tigertown undergrad . . . . jks _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities
Ian says: A great post. thanks. Below is our real problem. [our only one?] How would we fare with such a disputant? Ian quotes: In recent years, protectionism has also manifested itself in a somewhat different guise by challenging the moral roots of capitalism and globalization. At the risk of oversimplification, I would separate the differing parties in that debate into three groups. First, there are those who believe that relatively unfettered capitalism is the only economic organization consistent with individual and political freedom. In a second group are those who accept capitalism as the only practical means to achieve higher standards of living but who are disturbed by the seeming incivility of many market practices and outcomes. In very broad brush terms, the prevalence with which one encounters allegations of incivility defines an important difference in economic views that distinguishes the United States from continental Europe -- two peoples having deeply similar roots in political freedom and democracy. I think that this describes a real-world political schism, while there's a lot of truth to the description of the third group, but AG's description hides a premise, i.e., that protectionism is at the root of the challenge to the moral roots of capitalism and globalization. He also doesn't explain what he means by freedom. On the first issue, both a high-theory and a more-empirical approach are needed. On the second, it's more of a philosophical issue. AG seems to define freedom in a purely negative way (following I. Berlin's definition of different types of freedom). He doesn't deal with the non-freedom that arises from the freedom of capital, e.g., the way in which the reserve army of unemployed workers that helps preserve the capitalists' freedom to profit and accumulate wealth violates the freedom of the workers themselves (by limiting the choices of the unemployed and those who fear being laid off or fired). [I use the word freedom as refering to an abundance of choices (ignoring the unfreedom involved in how our preferences are determined), something that can be promoted by government and restricted by the private sector sometimes.] A more pronounced distinction separates both of these groups from a third group, which views societal organization based on the profit motive and corporate culture as fundamentally immoral. This group questions in particular whether the distribution of wealth that results from greater economic interactions among countries is, in some sense, fair. Here terms such as exploitation, subversion of democratic choice, and other value-charged notions dominate the debate. AG here gets into scientism, assuming that he's value free and his opponents are value-charged. But he's the one who put forth the values of individual and political freedom and civility. BTW, I think that the phrase subversion of democratic choice is much more obvious in its meaning than freedom, so the folks he's lambasting are at least up front about what they're pushing for. These terms too often substitute for a rigorous discussion of the difficult tradeoffs we confront in advancing the economic welfare of our nations. Such an antipathy to corporate culture has sent tens of thousands into the streets to protest what they see as exploitive capitalism in its most visible form -- the increased globalization of our economies. the idea that the world can be seen totally in terms of difficult tradeoffs and the like is a central part of the broadly-defined liberal political philosophy. A Marxian philosophy suggests that there are fundamental conflicts that cannot be described as tradeoffs. This should be complemented with empirical/concrete research about the actual nature of the trade-offs that exist -- and an effort to make sure that the trading off decisions are made democratically rather than by dictatorial elites such as that led by AG. Though presumably driven by a desire to foster a better global society, most protestors hold misperceptions about how markets work and how to interpret market outcomes. To be sure, those outcomes can sometimes appear perverse to the casual observer. In today's marketplace, for example, baseball players earn much more than tenured professors. [horrors!] But that discrepancy expresses the market fact that more people are willing to pay to see a ball game than to attend a college lecture. I may not personally hold the same relative valuation of those activities as others, but that is what free markets are about. They reflect and give weight to the values of the whole of society, not just those of any one segment. [Alan Greenspan] this business of free markets is standard crap. It ignores not only the institutional differences between the two markets (such as the non-pecuniary benefits that profs. receive) but also, more fundamentally, the structure of power and privilege in which such free markets operate. To see the latter, we need more than
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities
Sabri Oncu wrote: So I would have liked it more if the participants relate this theoretical debate to its implications for changing the world. I will always cherish Antonio Callari's observation at an IWGVT session at the EEA a few years ago - that value theorists use value theory as a substitute for politics. Who needs to organize, if the OCC will do the work for you? Doug
RE: [PEN-L:22566] Re: [PEN-L:22555] Fw: [?$?i]?i,R?A?a A? A??i?a,| A?CN A$A$?c?cCN cAIAR ?ACA ?E3 !
Try a laxative. mbs I get one or two each day. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Historical Materialism
Charles Brown wrote: Isn't value theory a premise of Doug's book ? 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 fundamentals, yes. If you mean the rest of it - OCC, the transoformation problem, the distiction between productive and unproductive labor, etc. - then no. Damn waste of time, I say. Doug
RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities
I will always cherish Antonio Callari's observation at an IWGVT session at the EEA a few years ago - that value theorists use value theory as a substitute for politics. Who needs to organize, if the OCC will do the work for you? people can think up lots of reasons to avoid politics. We can live without value theory for that purpose. JD (who has his own reasons).
Re: Re: Historical Materialism
Rakesh Bhandari wrote: 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 conclusively one way or the other using numbers. But in political terms, it's not the least bit ambiguous - the ruling class felt like it was losing control in the 1970s. Workers were sullen and rebellious, the U.S. lost the Vietnam War, and the Third World was talking about a new world economic order. As Paul McCracken's report for the OECD put it (and I wish I could find this exact quote again, it was a beaut), anxiety over inflation was inseparable from masses in the streets. The rebels were crushed. Doug
RE: Re: Historical Materialism
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 fundamentals, yes. If you mean the rest of it - OCC, the transoformation problem, the distiction between productive and unproductive labor, etc. - then no. Damn waste of time, I say. The rising OCC theory seems a waste of time except those specifically interested in crisis theory (and the dogmatic version is just a pain, like all dogma), while the Ricardian transformation problem (i.e. the derivation of mathematical relations between prices and values) seems a total distraction. But your book is suggesting that all of Wall Street is involved in unproductive labor, Doug. Jim D.
Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 4:01 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22576] RE: Re: Historical Materialism 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 fundamentals, yes. If you mean the rest of it - OCC, the transoformation problem, the distiction between productive and unproductive labor, etc. - then no. Damn waste of time, I say. The rising OCC theory seems a waste of time except those specifically interested in crisis theory (and the dogmatic version is just a pain, like all dogma), while the Ricardian transformation problem (i.e. the derivation of mathematical relations between prices and values) seems a total distraction. But your book is suggesting that all of Wall Street is involved in unproductive labor, Doug. Jim D. I couldn't help but see it as people playing musical chairs with claims on the future of production. Ian
Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
Devine, James wrote: But your book is suggesting that all of Wall Street is involved in unproductive labor, Doug. But Wall Street is also about arranging the ownership of productive assets and allocating investment. Doug
Re: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
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 conclusively one way or the other using numbers. prove what? problems were surely overcome not by increasing the purchasing power of the working class, against your sometimes underconsumption theory predicts. But in political terms, it's not the least bit ambiguous - the ruling class felt like it was losing control in the 1970s. Workers were sullen and rebellious, against rising rates of exploitation or wages not keeping up with value of labor power perhaps in part as a result of greater tax reductions. the U.S. lost the Vietnam War, leading to inflationary pressure in the process that threatened workers. and the Third World was talking about a new world economic order. the terms of trade had turned against OPEC in the 60s; the embargo was as much a defensive as offensive action. As Paul McCracken's report for the OECD put it (and I wish I could find this exact quote again, it was a beaut), anxiety over inflation was inseparable from masses in the streets. The rebels were crushed. Doug Which should have led to a much greater recovery in the profit rate than it did if profits/wage ratio was the main independent variable, as you imply when you're not focused on the problem of too high a s/v realizing in Dept II output for which there is insufficient consumer demand. That the crushing did not lead to a full restoration of profitability underlines the importance of the vcc and u/p labor ratio which you want to junk. At any rate, what value theory explains is why this barbaric repression of the working class-- as well as the destruction and devaluation of capital in part effected by Volcker's bankruptcy-inducing high interest regime and regressive tax reform at the expense of social darwinist social policy and the turning of the terms of trade against raw materials producers-- restored profitability (though only in part as Fred M emphasizes) and renewed capitalist accumulation (such that it was). That this is the capitalist way out of crises is explained on the basis of the law of value. Rakesh
Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
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 fundamentals, yes. If you mean the rest of it - OCC, the transoformation problem, the distiction between productive and unproductive labor, etc. - then no. Damn waste of time, I say. The rising OCC theory seems a waste of time except those specifically interested in crisis theory (and the dogmatic version is just a pain, like all dogma), 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 of surplus value. rb
RE: Re: Premises, Circularities and Alan's ontology
Ian writes: In a second look at this [stuff I wrote about cross-pollinating high theory and high empirics] after reading Doug's post, I'm wondering if it doesn't unwittingly express some ivory towerism that we need to work on...high-theory always struck me as elitism when I was in grad school where I saw a lot of good profs succumb to the theory is the opiate of the academic class. I know most of us on this list are far more politically active than most citizens, but I do think Nick Dyer-Witheford is onto something at the end of Cyber-Marx: Academics perhaps lose some pretensions as the bearer of great truths and grand analysis, but they become the carriers of particular skills, knowledge and accesses useful to movements in which they participate on the basis of increasing commonalities with other members of post-Fordist 'mass intellect.' I would add that the matrix for these connections is formed by the new movements of social unrest. Participation in these movements pulls academics into contact with other public service workers protesting cutbacks, wider labor and trade unionist organizations, and the many diverse constituencies surging against capital's agenda of high-technology austerity. Out of such contacts comes a corporate-university interaction very different from that which capital intends -- one that disseminates opposition to corporate rule from the streets back onto the campuses, and again from the campuses onto the streets. that's right: without the anti-systemic movements, academic leftists ain't worth shite. The same is true of activists and isolated individuals. I think having a good alternative research program that's needed to counteract and ultimately overthrow the hegemony of the neoclassical orthodoxy can help promote such a movement, but it's the movement that matters in the end. The theory can help the movements think for themselves, something that's necessary if we are to attain democracy (socialism, self-rule by the people), but is no substitute. -- JD
Re: Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
I have never thought that the productive/unproductive labor opposition was important -- but I wonder: Doug Henwood wrote: Devine, James wrote: But your book is suggesting that all of Wall Street is involved in unproductive labor, Doug. But Wall Street is also about arranging the ownership of productive assets This, precisely, is unproductive labor as Marx describes it: labor iinvolved in the realization and distribution of surplus value. and allocating investment. It's been a few years since I read your book, but I sort of remember it as specifically claiming that Wall Street did NOT allocate investment. Carrol Doug
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
Carrol Cox wrote: It's been a few years since I read your book, but I sort of remember it as specifically claiming that Wall Street did NOT allocate investment. WS doesn't have a large role in funding investment, but firms make investments based on what the stock market will like. Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities
Hey, I think this debate is great. I can delete the whole day's posts without reading them and think of the time I save ;-). Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba Doug wrote: 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 is highly correlated with the question I was asking to myself Doug: What is the purpose of this debate?
Re: Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
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 of surplus value. Liquidate liquidate liquidate - this is Mellon and the prophets! Doug
Re: Premises, Circularities and Alan's ontology
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 2:23 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22565] RE: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities 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? I can't speak for those folks, since my mind-reading ability has evaporated, but the reason why I think value (i.e., one of the key concepts of Marx's CAPITAL) is important because I think that it's a central component in the kind of alternative research program that's needed to counteract and ultimately overthrow the hegemony of the neoclassical orthodoxy (and the orthodoxies of other social sciences). I agree that books like WALL STREET can do an excellent job without using value, but that's only describing a piece of the whole (and using concepts that Marx developed, partly using value). I'm sure many excellent books like that will be written in the future without using value explicitly, but I think that it's important to building the alternative research program to have a constant cross-pollination between the high-theory level (dialectics, value, etc.) and the more empirical level (WALL STREET, etc.)The more-empirical works can benefit from more philosophical reflection or more-theoretical analysis, just as the high theorists can and should learn from doing empirical work and from confronting the ideal nature of abstract concepts with heterogeneity (the down and dirtiness) of the real world. Both types of analysis can gain from learning the limitations of their perspectives. Jim D. = In a second look at this after reading Doug's post, I'm wondering if it doesn't unwittingly express some ivory towerism that we need to work on...high-theory always struck me as elitism when I was in grad school where I saw a lot of good profs succumb to the theory is the opiate of the academic class. I know most of us on this list are far more politically active than most citizens, but I do think Nick Dyer-Witheford is onto something at the end of Cyber-Marx: Academics perhaps lose some pretensions as the bearer of great truths and grand analysis, but they become the carriers of particular skills, knowledge and accesses useful to movements in which they participate on the basis of increasing commonalities with other members of post-Fordist 'mass intellect.' I would add that the matrix for these connections is formed by the new movements of social unrest. Participation in these movements pulls academics into contact with other public service workers protesting cutbacks, wider labor and trade unionist organizations, and the many diverse constituencies surging against capital's agenda of high-technology austerity. Out of such contacts comes a corporate-university interaction very different from that which capital intends -- one that disseminates opposition to corporate rule from the streets back onto the campuses, and again from the campuses onto the streets. Ian
Re: Re: Historical Materialism
Rakesh, let Doug speak for himself. Rakesh Bhandari wrote: Doug thinks Marx was an underconsumptionist; at the same Doug subscribes to the wage led profit squeeze thesis. Doug's an eclectic. Doug's hostility to value theory derives in part from his rejection of the significance of the Yaffe, Shaikh, Perlo, and Moseley finding that despite the so called wage led squeeze on profits, s/v has had a tendency to rise throughout. Doug thinks his theory is radical because it imlies that since the working class had the ability to choke the profitability of the working class it may have the power to overthrow the capitalist class. But there are empirical problems with the wage squeeze theory raised by Fred and others, and I don't think Doug has even recognized them. And I won't here get into why the implications are not as politically radical as Doug thinks. Moreover, that capital accumulation depends on a rising s/v does in fact disclose the limits of this mode of production since as greater difficulties are faced in raising the rate of exploitation, the system comes to itself depend on convulsive crises by which as a result of the destruction and devaluation of capital the value composition of capital can be readjusted to the rate of exploitation such that accumulation can resumed and the realization of surplus value thereby ensured. On the basis of value theory, it is clarified that the capitalist way out of crises is not putting more purchasing power in the hands of workers or simply increasing the rate of exploitation. If the system as a whole cannot be put right even through a protracted crisis, then one capital survives ever more only at the expense of another, yielding slaughterous destruction in the world market and the political tensions to what gives rise. Barbarism or socialism. RB -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: LOV and LTV
Chris, Marx puts the dynamism in, in part, by saying that value represents the cost of REPRODUCTION, not production. This is a key element in his analysis of the devalorization of capital. Chris Burford wrote: At 06/02/02 20:10 -0800, you wrote: This definition of course does not capture the systemic and dynamic features which Chris B is attempting to build into his definition. The law of value of commodities ultimately determines how much of its disposable working-time society can expend on each particular class of commodities. V Vol I Ch 14Sec 4 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 theory are more than possible). Chris Burford -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ken Dam hassles India about Enron
http://www.atimes.com Trashed at home, Enron takes it out on India By Praful Bidwai NEW DELHI - As the Enron scandal sends wave after shock wave through the US political system, the international repercussions of history's most spectacular case of corporate bankruptcy are just surfacing. Enron has become an abusive transitive verb in the United States, where some 15 committees are investigating the sleazy political connections and the energy deregulation policies that allowed the New Economy company to stage a meteoric rise. Many of the 250-plus senators and congressmen (half the total) who received Enron's donations are returning them to save themselves from further opprobrium. But in the Third World, Enron faces very little opprobrium, nor shows any embarrassment. In India, where it has the largest direct investment in an overseas industrial project, the corporation continues to make bullying and threatening moves. It is trying to drag the government of India's Maharashtra state into international arbitration over the termination of a power purchase contract signed with its subsidiary, Dabhol Power Co, rather than submit itself to Indian jurisdiction. The controversial contract for extremely expensive electricity was suspended six months ago by the Maharashtra power board, which nearly went bankrupt itself as a result of high power prices. As reported earlier, the deal was reached through shadowy, secret negotiations, and in violation of the Electricity Supply Act. Enron is also getting Washington to plead its case. Deputy Treasury Secretary Kenneth Dam, who is visiting India, has told New Delhi to resolve the Enron issue speedily and speed up economic reforms. On January 28, Ambassador Robert Blackwill made a forceful intervention at an industry meeting, saying that all foreign investment into India hinges upon a favorable resolution of the Dabhol company dispute, which feeds a chronic perception among the overseas investing community that India may not be ready yet for big-time international investment. Blackwill demanded adherence to the sanctity of contract, doubts about which can spell death to potential investors. This statement left many industrialists angry and inspired Blackwill's redescription as the Viceroy, the British crown's all-powerful representative in India during the colonial period who towered over domestic subjects. Blackwill may only be voicing the views of the Republican administration. After all, US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham defends energy deregulation in spite of Enron's collapse and the bankruptcy of PGE, the United States' largest power distribution company. In a January 14 Washington Post article he claimed, Deregulation is working. Blackwill's remarks were indicative of US support for Enron's effort to get as much as US$2.3 billion for its 65 percent stake in Dabhol Power Co. Market analysts evaluate it at less than half that figure. Successive US administrations have heavily lobbied on Enron's behalf. Vice President Dick Cheney, himself a former energy-company boss, has been in the forefront here. This policy is rationalized by the White House. Its spokesman Ari Fleischer recently said: It's not uncommon for [companies] to have exposures, which do require contacts between American officials and government officials in other countries. In 1995, president Bill Clinton sent an official memorandum to the White House chief of staff helping Enron clinch the Dabhol deal, which was then being resisted by the New Delhi government. The US energy secretary had publicly warned India: Failure to honor the agreements between the project partners and the various Indian governments will jeopardize not only the Dabhol project but also most, if not all, of the other private power projects proposed for international financing. The threat worked. More recently, said The Washington Post, the US National Security Council reduced itself to a concierge service between Enron's Kenneth Lay and India's National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra. Normally, these disclosures would have sparked a sharp political riposte in India, especially from opposition parties such as Sonia Gandhi's Congress. But their response has been supine. This is so in part because Cheney had spoken to Gandhi and Manmohan Singh during their US visit in June. However, pressure to liquidate or nationalize the Dabhol Power Co is likely to build up in India as the Enron investigation proceeds apace in the United States. There are three general, and three specific, lessons in the Enron story for the developing countries. First, it is absolutely vital to fight off hegemonic pressures on behalf of multinational corporations. Without such pressure, the highly unequal contract between Dabhol Power and the Maharashtra government would not have been signed in 1995. The central government of India would not have given sovereign guarantees to the project. The various Indian agencies could have resisted such
Re: LOV and LTV
^ CB: Are you saying that probablistic laws are not fuzzier than laws that are more definitive ? Depends on the probablistic laws. The laws of quantum mechanics are as precise as can be. So too are the laws of Mendelian genetics. Essentially they can predict the probabilities they describe extremely precisely. A law of thefalling rate of profit is not like that that. The laws of physics are formulated with plenty of exceptions. Take the first law of Newton and Galilei as presented by Einstein below. The clause removed sufficiently far from other bodies is a ceteris paribus clause and implies exceptions to the law ( i.e. when the body is not removed sufficiently from other bodies there is an exception). Not the same thing. If you factor in the gravitational attraction of other bodies, you can (with difficulty, the many-body problem is very challenging), predict the path of the body affected as precisely as you like. With physics, the sources of deviation are few in kind, well understood, and rigorously accountable for. Social systems by contrast are open. We don't know even what kinds of things might count as disturbances. And the ideal type models, freed from disturbances, are of unclear status. The best ideal type we have of that sort is the rational actor model underlying game theory and neoclassical economics. Even there the terms are disputed. With the rational actor minimax or maximin or what? I repeat that I am not, as a social scientist, gripped with physics envy. I do not think that physics is better as science merely because it is more precise. I also agree that the differences between the natural and the social sciences are differences in degree rather than kind. This was the thesis of my doctoral dissertation. That doesn't mean that there are no differences. jks _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities
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 misguided, without taking it personally. What do you think about my Hayekianism? No doubt that I have my head screwed on backwards. I don't take it personally as long as you press serious objections. You're not persuading us not because we are true believers but because your reasons (redundancy, transformation problem) are not as strong as you think they are. Perhaps not. My fundamental objection is that the program isn't going anywhere. I think it's a waste of time. But I also think that a lot of people--maybe you--are attached to it not because it's so explanatiorly powerful, but because, as Doug says, it's a sort of a pledge of allegience to the red flag. jks _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
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 of surplus value. Liquidate liquidate liquidate - this is Mellon and the prophets! Doug But even Mellon here belies the optimistic faith, soon to be shattered, that society can master its own crises as long as there is no political interference with sharp and short downturns. Yet as Adolf Lowe remarked after the world war the crises intrinsic to the capitalist system have lost their virulence; but if we consider an international destruction of value like the world war as the modern form of crisis in the age of imperialism, and there is much to be said for the view, there is little room for extravagant hopes of 'spontaneous stabilization.' Quoted in Mattick, Economic Crisis and Crisis Theory, p. 120 Doug, as I understand value theory, there is a prediction of an inevitable dialectical proces of disturbances, contradictions, and crises--not an absolute, purely economic impossibility of accumulation, but a constant alternation between the overcoming of crisis and its reproduction at a higher level until the destruction of the underlying social relations by the working class or the self-emancipation of peanuts. rb
Goobers of all nations unite!
Rakesh Bhandari wrote: -not an absolute, purely economic impossibility of accumulation, but a constant alternation between the overcoming of crisis and its reproduction at a higher level until the destruction of the underlying social relations by the working class or the self-emancipation of peanuts. Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises,Circularities
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 misguided, without taking it personally. What do you think about my Hayekianism? No doubt that I have my head screwed on backwards. I don't take it personally as long as you press serious objections. 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 on your part. What you thought was settled is in fact not. You're not persuading us not because we are true believers but because your reasons (redundancy, transformation problem) are not as strong as you think they are. Perhaps not. My fundamental objection is that the program isn't going anywhere. I think it's a waste of time. Justin, which alternative is going somewhere? But I also think that a lot of people--maybe you--are attached to it not because it's so explanatiorly powerful, but because, as Doug says, it's a sort of a pledge of allegience to the red flag. This is indeed a contemptous response since I have taken the time to say what advantages in terms of clarity (Marx's transformation procedure is easier for the working class to follow than Sraffa's simultaneous equations with a standard commodity as the numeraire) and realism (even if we don't need genes and labor value to calculate, we include them in the interests of better grasping the actual process which is not that of inputs turning themselves into outputs) and scope (ability to integrate money) are gained by Marx's value theory while the objections (redundancy, transformation problem) are not compelling. You are in fact most often saying that value is not needed--which is a claim that does not really justify your harsh judgement. To be consistent you should be making the charges of metaphysics and illogic. If you want we can deal with joint production and negative values in following up on moral depreciation. rb
