File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/94-08-17.000, message 68


Date: Sat, 06 Aug 1994 10:15:51 +1000
From: Steve.Keen-AT-unsw.EDU.AU
Subject: Re: reply to Steve Keen


Gene Holland challenges my comment that the neoclassical
value theory has been more successful in enabling the extension
of the theory than the LTV. He calls my statement that
"in sociology, history, philosophy and cultural studies, Marx's
legacy continues to provide the main opposition to conservative
thought" a concession. It was not: it was an attempt to delineate
where I believe that Marx's legacy has been extended (in socioligy, 
etc), and where I think it has been wasted (in economics).

I did not state strongly enough in the original posting that my
explanation for this dichotomy is in part that the LTV plays a
minor role in Marxian sociology et al, but has played a major
role in economics.

Gene argues that:

"Here Keen confuses the purview of neoclassical economics with
that of Marx's historical and materialist critique of bourgeois
*political economy* and capitalist society.  What the LTV
predicts, in fact, are tendencies such as the perpetual drive for
expanded markets, the concentration of capital, periodic crises
of overproduction/underconsumption, etc.  And because the LTV is
*further* linked via the concepts of exploitation, class, and
ideology to Marx's systematic critique of capitalism and
bourgeois society as a whole, it is no wonder that, as Keen says,
>in sociology, history, philosophy and cultural studies, Marx's
>legacy continues to provide the main opposition to conservative
>thought.

I would dispute that the LTV is needed as an active ingredient in
sociological applications of Marxism; it is something which most
marxian sociologists would, I expect, have in the background; but
it is rare that it would have to come to the foreground. In
economics, if you believe the LTV, then it is forever in the
foreground--and in that position I believe it has hobbled the
development of marxian economics, which I regard as the poor
cousin of marxian thought in every other discipline.

Why has it hobbled the development of theory? Because it is itself
the product of a mistake in Marx's logic. The LTV brand of Marxism--
where the source of surplus was explained by the difference between
necessary labor and the length of the working day--is what I would
call "Ricardian Marxism", and it was Marx's method until the third
notebook of the Grundrisse. Then he made a major theoretical advance
in his value theory, which enabled him to transcend the explanation 
of the source of surplus by appeal to the special characteristics
of the commodity labor-power. He instead developed a concept of value
based on a dialectic under capitalism between use-value and
exchange-value, from which the conclusion that labor-power was a
source of surplus could easily be derived.

What could not be derived, however, was the additional presumption
of an LTV, that commodity inputs to production are not a source
of surplus. This new value theory, properly applied, reaches the
conclusion that they can be a source of surplus.

Coincidentally, this presumption--that no one input to production
can be the sole source of surplus--is implicit in Sraffian and
post-Keynesian economics, where the real advances in critical
economics have been made in the last 60 years.

So I am not against value theory--far from it. I am against
a mistaken application of value theory, made by Marx himself
initially, but maintained doggedly since then by those who
would call themselves his heirs. On this note, I would
quote the scribbler himself. The following is an excerpt
from his comments on his doctoral thesis (See McLennan,
Karl marx, Early Texts, p. 14):

"It is conceivable that a philosopher should be guilty of this or
that inconsistency because of this or that compromise; he may
himself be conscious of it. But what he is not conscious of is that
in the last analysis this apparent compromise is made possible by
the deficiency of his principles or an inadequate grasp of them.
So if a philosopher really has compromised it is the job of his
followers to use the inner core of his thought to illuminate
his own superficial expression of it."

Cheers,
Steve Keen


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