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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