Date: Sun, 14 May 95 09:42:22 BST
From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org>
Subject: Value - Steve's paper: Part 1


"A Marx for Post Keynesians"

Steve has been nudging me to respond to his revised draft of this paper
and it is difficult, having read it to know at what level to do so. 

My feeling overall it that it is a heroic but in some respects still
seriously flawed attempt to bridge elements of Marxist economic and 
Keynesian analysis.

I feel Steve is a very valuable member of this list, like others, who
not only bridge disciplines but bridge schools. It is a perilous role, 
likely to fail to earn the respect of either side, likely indeed to be
mistrusted, and vulnerable to ridicule for mistakes. At the same time 
if it works it provides an organ of communication with a much wider world,
that greatly enhances the relevance of these discussions.

The single most important point of mutual interest IMO between Keynesians
and Marxists is that Keynes represents a view that there is no 
inherent reason why the capitalist economy should operate at full employ-
ment, and that such a view is entirely compatible with Marx's analysis of 
the reserve army of labour and the long periods of stagnation between the 
upswings in the trade cycle.

Whereas the neo-classicals still have a political edge in the analysis of 
the individual economies of competing countries, on a global scale there is
no reason why Keynesian policies should not be implemented on a planned 
scale, with the stimulation of areas of the world economy unlikely to 
produce massive global inflation but instead to get people able to be
productive again - of course I am thinking of things like house building in
southern Africa in the recovery from apartheid. The humane management of 
the world economy is a major democratic demand and Marxists and post-
Keynesians should work together on it.


Steve's essay has been strengthened in its introduction and its second 
half in its elaboration of post-Keynesian economics over many points on 
which I am not qualified to comment. I think it is best taken as a stimul-
ating contribution by those in a better position to address the questions.
There are times in this when I think his comments on Marx  may not 
be fair, but in principle a Kuhnian approach in which there is a lot of 
flexibility to examine which models have most explanatory power, should be
able to contain and foster such a process constructively.

One gap I noticed was that I was hoping post-Keynesianism would have more
to say to explain the cyclical nature of the business cycle, because I
think Marxism is rather good on this. I am sure it says something.

However the significance of Steve's paper for me is a substantial shift
of rather a novel nature in his critique of certain arguments by Marx on 
the Labour Theory of Value to which he suggest a "slavish adherence" has 
blinded Marxists against the richer implications of other dialectical 
concepts in Marx.

My modest contribution to this shift was stubbornly to insist in Hans 
Ehrbar's email Capital class, that Marx's arguments in Chapters 7 and 8 
about the origin of surplus value were entirely logically consistent and 
should be read without any implication that he was deceiving 
himself or his readers with some sort of conjuring trick.

Steve's novel response is to do a lot of work in positing two networks of 
propositions in Marx's writings, one which he calls the Labour set of 
Axioms, and one which he calls the Commodity Set of Axioms. The former
are he argues the basis for the labour theory of value, which in his 
opinion is deeply flawed, the latter, interpreted dialectically, contain 
valuable insights relevant today not just to Marxists but to post-
Keynesians because of what they have to say about commodities.

New ideas have to go through all sorts of hurdles, many unfair before
they are accepted, and even if I were not an interested party in the 
debate, sorry presentation of views, I think it would be hard for large
bodies of academics and students of Marx to agree that the two sets of 
axioms were clearly differentiated into two set in a fairly reproducible 
way.

What I think Steve's initiative has done however by talking about two sets, 
is to highlight that a creative and dialectical approach to Marx should 
take on board the existence of a significant number of contradictions and 
not just that between capital and labour. If Steve illustrates this at this
stage by a thought experiment suggesting that there are two differentiated 
set of axioms this may stimulate further discussion.

But but but ...  all this shifts the terms of the argument whereby 
Steve is still sure that surplus does not come from labour power alone, 
but from capital as well, and this means for him the LTV is dead.

I have been pulling my punches up to this moment on this point, but I think
there remain two significant flaws in Steve's description of Marx's 
analysis. But this post has hopefully tried to be positive about the 
contribution into which clearly a great deal of effort has gone, and it 
is already quite long. I will return when I can compose a suitably-phrased
critique of the flaws.

Chris Burford


 


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