Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 17:34:58 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: HoPE article


Justin Schwartz wrote:

> Jerry, you know more about economics than I do, but I thought the "minor
> post-Ricardan" line was PAul Samuelson's.

It was indeed a line from Samuelson, but the Neo-Ricardian critique of
Marx, especially by Steedman, echoes Samuelson's "eraser theorem" charge.

> In S's favor I
> will say that, what is rare among neoclassical economists, he thought
> long, hard, seriously, and fairly sympathetically about Marx and published
> some very deep criticisms in his scholarly work, as opposed to that absurd
> textbook that so many of us were subjected to.

I don't agree. I think that Baumol showed much more understanding of
Marx from a nc perspective. I also think that Baumol was the clear
"winner" in the debates in the '70's in the _Journal of Economic
Literature_ (JEL).

> What neo-Ricardans areyou talking about?

Steedman especially, but also Lippi, Roncoglia, et. al..

> Sraffa never considered Marx as
> minor anything. (Actually friendsof mine at CAmbridge who were students of
> S said that he was a moderately hard core Stalinist in politics in the
> early 1980s, i.e., to his death.) Steedman certainly doesn't think Marx is
> minor. Howard and Kinh don't. So who does?

I view Howard and King more as Analytical Marxists, rather than
Neo-Ricardians.

As for Sraffa, he -- evidently -- was a Stalinist ... but so were many
Neo-Ricardians in Europe. He was also a friend, I am told of Gramsci, but
that says very little as well.

Jerry



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