Gil had written: > >1) SCARCITY. Skillman: "As Roemer quite explicitly explains >elsewhere in GTEC, the means of production must also be *scarce* for >exploitation to arise. .. this is equivalent to asserting the >equivalence of exploitation with differential ownership of *scarce* >means of production (DOSMP). "]
Roberto Veneziani writes in reply: > >If the issue is about "ECONOMIC SCARCITY," namely the relative >scarcity of capital with respect to labour, such that profits remain >positive, then Skillman's point confirms my result! I show that in >Roemer's subsistence economy exploitation and profits (thanks to >Theorem 2.2) disappear. Skillman says: your result would not hold if >profits remained positive. I agree. The point is that there is no >mechanism guaranteeing such "scarcity" in Roemer's models, and this >"scarcity" disappears even in the absence of accumulation, so that >the physical balance between labour and capital does not change in >time. > > > >2) G. Skillman suggestion about scarcity is the following: let K be >some other factor guaranteeing the "scarcity" of capital (namely, >positive profits), how do positive profits guarantee the scarcity of capital; are they not rather an index of said scarcity? > then Roemer's argument should be more precisely stated as: [X >persistent + K persistent => Z persistent]. Well, it is difficult to >disagree: since K guarantees persistent positive profits, by Theorem >2.2, this guarantees persistent exploitation. However, in this case, >unless one shows that X is fundamental in the causation of K, namely >that X implies K (so that in the end it is still only X that >matters), the logical claim remains true: DOPA is not necessary and >sufficient by itself to generate persistent exploitation and >profits. Theorem 2.2 does not change this conclusion, and the claim >that a perfectly competitive neoclassical model with utility >maximising agents is unlikely to provide exploitation (and profits) >as a persistent phenomenon. > > Why is there economic scarcity, a shortage of capital with respect to labor? And I ask this about real capitalist economies, not about Roemer's models of susistence economies? It is the scarcity of surplus labor in the production process that ensures the relative scarcity of capital with respect to labor: the diminishing flow of surplus value relative to rising minimum capital requirements constrains and discourages the rate of accumulation that would be needed as the OCC rises to absorb not only a growing population but also the proletarians, artisans and peasants continously displaced by technological change and the expansion of commodity production. To say that additional capital is increasingly in short supply vis a vis the new and displaced laboring population as accumulation progresses only means that in the course of accumulation the primordial source of this capital, surplus value, becomes progressively more scarce, too small, in relation to the already accumulated mass of capital Production (P) is explanatorily fundamental to the scarcity of DOPA (S) and thus the persistence of exploitation (E). That is, P=>E implies P+S=>E It's into the hidden abode of production one must enter to explain the persistence of scarce DOPA relative to labor, no? Walrasianism Marx is not suited for that kind of investigation, is it? >(1) differences in preferences are the typical neoclassical argument >to justify differences in wealth, and Roemer explicitly rejects this >sort of argument. See for instance, the discussion about differences >in rates of time preference in Roemer 1981, p.85, and Roemer, 1982, >p.12. (A particularly detailed discussion is in "Free to loose", but >I do not have the reference because I left my copy in Italy!!). Gil, what are the page numbers here, do you know? > >I don't either. This is the only point in which I think there is a >mere misunderstanding, probably due to my poor explanation in the >paper. I do not think Marx's theory requires a walrasian model with >imperfections: exploitation does not appear thanks to monopoly >power, externalities, etc. The theory should work in a competitive >economy, too, at least at the highest level of abstraction. The >point is not the adjective "competitive," but the adjective >"walrasian." Once again, I do not think one can provide >microfoundations to exploitation within a perfectly competitive >neoclassical-walrasian model. But by attempting to do so, one can speak the same language as fellow economists and more importantly prepare one's students to do well in other economics courses. And this can be more important than understanding Marx on his own terms, no? Rakesh
