File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9710, message 414


Date: 	Wed, 29 Oct 1997 02:34:54 -0800
From: bhandari-AT-phoenix.princeton.edu (Rakesh Bhandari)
Subject: Re: M-TH: value theory and the empirical economy


I will return later to Doug's criticisms of Carchedi's explanations of
stock market panics and financial crises. It seems that Doug has missed one
of the central themes of his analysis--fictitious capital--and I really
can't at present work through Hayek, deBrunhoff, Horace Robbins and others.
If I remember correctly, one of Carchedi's main effort is the explanation
of rises in the market price of shares  beyond what their present dividends
or the future profits of the respective companies justifies.

Doug also notes the Communist Manifesto as justification for a statist
conception of social democracy; I would suggest we look at the Critique of
the Gotha Programme, suppressed for some time by social democrats, to
determine the nature of Marx's critique of politics--here we also have Gary
Teeple's Marx's Critique of Politics, Paul Thomas Alien Politics, Adam
Przeworksi's critique of social democracy.

But as much as I get excited about FICTITIOUS CAPITAL and MARX'S CRITIQUE
OF POLITICS, I must stay focused on matters racial.

A quick response to:

>Silly me, I'd hoped that several generations of theorizing a catastrophe
>that has never arrived might actually lead people to question the
>usefulness of the theorizing.

Yes, silly you (Doug).  In the previous post, I put in capital letters
(though you ignored it anyway) the reminder that Grossmann and Mattick had
predicted post war BOOMS first on account of  devaluations  and secondly
(this is specific Mattick's contribution) on account of the false
prosperity of the mixed economy. (In an extremely subtle analysis, Cogoy
shows how the growth of a "third department" can INcrease social production
and consumption while at the same negatively affecting the expanded
reproduction of total social capital, so in the early 70s there was a
prediction and retrodiction of high levels of production, giving way to
stagnation and then to more vicious struggles over the rate of
exploitation--boy, what an embarrassing analysis.)

Carchedi argues that through the international distribution of value much
of the crisis has been passed so far on to the dominated countries.

So the claim  that there had been predictions of catastrophes for
GENERATIONS is a strawman.

Rakesh

ps Doug, if you could give me citations for Shaikh's most recent work on
long waves, I would appreciate it. There is an essay of his in a volume
edited by Wallerstein, I believe. But I couldn't find it in the library.
There are Schumpeterian roots to Mandel's interest in long waves (Barkley
Rosser used to take such a line).  Based on Marx's value theory, Moseley
and Carchedi emphasize that a thorough-going crisis-induced devaluation is
necessary for there to be a significant upward hike in the rate of profit,
that upturns only seem technologically induced because innovations are
adopted as accumulation resumes, though the conditions for that cannot be
achieved without deep crisis.  Is Shaikh's idea of an upward turn specifc
to thus US; is the claim based on the defeat of the working class or
productivity payoffs from new technologies? Does he theorize any political
conditions for it to be secured?  It's not that I am going to read the
essay because I am working on my diss--but just for reference. Thanks.





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