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[OPE-L:5246] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: one commodity models and illustrations

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Models are far from the whole content of a theory, and this is
particularly true for Marx. They still play an indispensable role in
linking theoretical concepts to reality in Marx's work. For example,
Marx's discussion of simple reproduction is a model intended to
clarify certain issues about the balance of demand and supply. It's
not a good representation of concrete capitalist reality for several
reasons, including the fact that real capitalist societies always
accumulate, and that accumulation always involves changes in the
composition of capital, the scale of production and so forth. My
point was certainly not that we should restrict Marxist theoretical
practice to model-construction, but that when we do model
construction we should do it critically and parsimoniously.

Duncan


Duncan writes --

In general, models always abstract from critical features of reality.
The important question is whether the model has enough detail to
throw light on the problem it's aimed at. For example, it is very
difficult to deal with the relation between c and v in empirical
studies of most modern economies because the data is not available at
the flow level to measure c. But I don't think that means Marxist
economics should just give up on those economies.


Is this assimilation of Marx's methods to a methodologically indifferent
sense of model building correct?  Abstraction is always *from*, but more
importantly for Marx, abstraction is overwhelmingly *to* critical features
of reality.  This is not true of social science generally.  For example,
when we abstract to producers who produce independently for private
exchange or to the separation of workers from the means of production, we
abstract *to* the most critical features of value and capital respectively.
 Similarly value, for example, doesn't abstract from reality to suppose
that in perfect competition the price of a product is homogeneous; instead
it tends to generate that result.  So it's not enough, for Marx's
abstraction, that it has enough detail to shed light on the problem.  For
Marx, the question is whether the abstraction reaches and identifies those
(simpler) aspects of reality essential for understanding how a thing tends
to behave.

Howard 

--
Duncan K. Foley
Leo Model Professor
Department of Economics
Graduate Faculty
New School University
65 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10003
(212)-229-5906
messages: (212)-229-5717
fax: (212)-229-5724
e-mail: foleyd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
alternate: foleyd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
alternate: dkf@xxxxxxxxxxx
webpage: http://cepa.newschool.edu/~foleyd

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