Re: Keynes and Marx

[Carlos Eduardo Rebello <crebello@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 12:38:21 -0500
> From: "Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: Keynes and Marx
>
> >>> Carlos Eduardo Rebello <crebello@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 02/10/0
> Keynes's theory, in fact, is a theory of capitalist accumulation from
> the point of view of *the actual actions of the bourgeoisie as a
> collection of individuals*, something that was lacking, in my view, in
> Marx, that still centered on the analysis of the process of production
> as such and set to analyze the organization of capitalist production as
> a whole mainly as from the abstract viewpoint of a counterfactual
> "proportionate" capitalist economy that does not exist, of course, but
> that he followers, less diatecticians than him, thought exist, something
> with spwned a whole ill-guided controversy about the Bk.2 reproduction
> schemes from which little useful can be rescued.
>
> &&&&&&&&&&
>
> CB: Carlos, could you elaborate a little on what you mean by "the abstract 
> viewpoint
>of a counterfactual 'proportionate' capitalist economy that does not exist "  ?
>
> CB

As you know, in the reproduction schemes in Capital Bk2, Marx built a
set of linear equations in which the economy as a whole was divided in
two departments: DI (capital goods) and DII (consumption goods).Each
Dept. uses variable (v) and fixed (c) capital, in order to produce
surplus-value (s). DI needs to supply DII with capital goods, and at the
same time the variable capital it uses form the market for DII - one
market supplies the other. The logic behind the scheme is that the
quantities of labour used by each department - and the amounts of
surplus-value produced - must find an equilibrium in order to grant that
the general surplus-value is realized through the selling of the
commodities the embody it; in a word, Marx does a model of General
Equilibrium akin to that of Walras's.

However, Marx was no fool like Walras and was fully aware of the fact
that, in a capitalist economy, one can talk of Departments that "use"
quantities of socially accepted labour or "produce" surplus value, as an
*Ex Post* reality created by statistical aggregation; each department is
a myriad of individual capitals that do *not* coordinate their decisions
*Ex Ante* - if they did so, we would be in a post-capitalist economy!
The reproduction schemes consist, tehrefore, of an abstract scheme that
portrays a "model" capitalist economy, and therefore proves
counterfactually the inevitability of crisis of realization, given the
fact that an actual capitalist economy can function "by the book" only
by chance! Also, the most important conclusion to be taken from the
model is the fact that a capitalist economy reproduces itself by the
self-propelled expansion of its markets, and therefore must seek
consomers by incorporating more and more manpower in its own system of
production - a conclusion that was profitably exploited for a study of
concrete processes of capitalist accumulation by Lenin (*Development of
Capitalism in Russia*) and Rosa Luxemburg (*The Accumulation of
Capital). However, Capital Bk2 has also spawned a host of theoretical
writings that concern themselves *only* about the *internal consistency*
of the equation system, as it was supposed to portray an actual
capitalist economy. This literature, I find entirely useless, both in
the theoretical and concrete levels of analysis.

Carlos Rebello