Value: Juan's criticisms

["Chris, London" <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

While I am concerned by the sharpness of Juan's criticisms of Steve, and
have a much softer opinion about why Steve came to his views, I must side with
Juan's right to make strong criticism.

The whole study of economics is enormously distorted by the power relations
of present capitalist society. The issues become apparent as soon as funding
applications are considered.

There does need to be a summary of the main criticisms of Marx's economics.
While allowing for some errors and gaps, eg in unedited texts like Grundrisse,
we must maintain the overall internal coherence of the Marxist model. It is
one thing to struggle to try to understand it, it is another to go from
complex issue to complex issue totally convinced that it is not internally 
coherent.
After a certain point, if the horse does not want to drink at the water, the
horse need not. Let us at least have a fairly clear overall understanding of the
model, and consider how it explains phenomena, in comparison to other models.

I would value Juan's penetrating criticisms of Steedman. We established on the
list that Sraffa's purpose was not at all to criticise Marx. Steedman however
deftly entitled his theory "Marx after Sraffa", using Sraffa for credibility
to criticise Marx. Steedman's extensive and highly debatable assumptions
have been published on this list, but not discussed.


Chris B, London.

PS
Basically we must get the boot on the other foot. Marxist economics should not
be bogged down in apologising for a series of theoretical problems. EG the
transformation "problem". If conventional "bourgeois" economics are so good,
why is almost a third of the world's workforce under- or un-employed?
If the soviet economy had just been decisively liberated why are the victors
ashamed to crown their heads with laurels?

There seems to be a hitch with the production.




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