Re: (OPE-L) Ernesto's "Damned Lies" ?

[Riccardo Bellofiore <riccardo.bellofiore@xxxxxxxx>]

Title: Re: (OPE-L) Ernesto's "Damned Lies" ?

Hi Jerry,

my answer would be:

(i) yes, Ernesto's paper are "lies", since - in my opinion - his interpretation of Matx is unwarranted and wrong

(ii) no, they are not "damned lies", an _expression_ of criticism on which TSS people has specialized, and that add nothing to the issues debated

(iii) in sum, Ernesto's attitude towards Marx is the right one, a critical attitude, against which it is legitimate to argue against; what cannot be accepted is that there are critics who pretend they have the Marx's interpretation.

About the Rome conference, as probably I told you at the time, I received more or lessa month before a short mail by Andrew Kliman, the content was: "will you come to the Rome conference where your interpretation of Marx will be destroyed?".

I answered: Andrew, I cannot come to a conference I don't know it exists, and at which I have not been invited in advance, and that I don't even know it exists (note: of course Foley and Mongiovi etc. must have been alerted much before). I received a kind of circular letter some days after by Vasapollo of the Laboratorio, with the date fixed, inviting all those who wanted to come. I had exams, defined some weeks before, and I could not go.

Note: in the book the Old Myth which was discussed at the conference, I was very heavily (and critically) attacked. I love that, provided you have an opportunity to reply, on a plan of equality and in your terms. You would expect I would have sometime been invited to have my opportunity to rebut those criticism? Never. If my English is not good enough, let me repeat it in several languages: Never.  Jamais, Jamas, Mai. Alan Freeman repeatedly told me that I would have been welcome to discuss the TSS, in their own terms of course, not in mine. To express my views about marx was not anymore very productive. To ask me to answer their criticism leaving me free to say what *I* thought is something they never imagined as sensible.

This tells all about this stream of thought. In the book the Old Myth my position was purported by Kliman and Carchedi in terms which clearly contradicts my theses, more than that against what I have many times said again and again. Examples: I have NEVER said that my criticism to Marx were minor, as Andrew says, I think they are major, and lead to major changes. I only said that in my view this changes lead to reinstate on better terms Marx's exploitation theory. I NEVER said, as Carchedi says about me, that there are successive approximations in Marx, something against which I have battled all my life. I taleked about what Rubin called the "method of comparison", giving quotes from Marx's Capital I, and I insisted again and again (contrary to what Carchedi says about me) that this method involves a comparison with a situation which is fundamental and express real magnitudes in capitalism. But it seem that what they want for (their interpretation of) Marx and themselves has not to be allowed to others: a fair representation of what you want to criticize.

So, you see, I very much like to discuss with Ernesto, though I disagree with a lot of what he says about marx, likely 93%, but I have found completely useless to discuss with (most, not all) TSS people as long as they do not accept that, before than answers, questions may be different among us, and methods, and styles of thought, and that respect has to be granted not in words but in practice for ALL, within and outside Marxism (what they often says about Sraffa, to say one thing, is ridicolous: the more so for those of us who were serious enough to go to Cambridge and try to understand what really Sraffa thought about Marx).

riccardo

At 8:33 -0500 15-02-2004, gerald_a_levy wrote:

> Hi Phil:
>  
> There was a conference in Rome last
> year,  organised, I think,  by Laboratorio
> per la Critical Sociale.  Ernesto
> Screpanti's paper was entitled 'Value and Exploitation:
> A Counterfactual Approach'.  From
> the first paragraph
> :.. Cavallaro's appeal to beware of
> mystifying labour values lets us hope that the
> search can proceed along correct lines
> today, avoiding certain scholastic forcings
> which we have witnessed in the past,
> although the interventions of Carchedi,
> Freeman and Kliman seem to want to kill
> this hope at birth.
> This could well elicit a
> response.
>  
> Thanks for the information.  I don't
> think anyone -- and perhaps least
> of all, Ernesto --  would fault the
> author for responding to "Value and
> Exploitation: A Counterfactual
> Approach."   There is  a question,
> though,  about _how_ to respond.
>  
> Do you think that Ernesto has been
> spreading "Lies, Damned Lies" about
> Marx? 
>  
> Would you agree that there should have
> been another title selected for the
> Kliman paper?
>  
> In solidarity, Jerry

--

Riccardo Bellofiore
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche
"Hyman P. Minsky"
Università di Bergamo
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