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

[Phil Dunn <pscumnud@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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

> 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

Hi Jerry

First a couple of corrections.  It is the  Laboratorio per la Critica Sociale, not Critical, and the conference was in 2002, not last year.

I have not seen Andrew Kliman's paper so I cannot really comment on title selection.

To quote Screpanti: The [orthodox] theory [of exploitation] is incoherent if applied to the capitalist mode of production.  In a system of competitive equilibrium  ... etc., etc.

I do not agree with either the orthodox theory or Screpanti's, but that is irrelevant.  It is the charge of incoherence that - I would guess-  would attract the 'Damned Lies' bit.  The issues of interpretation are whether Marx was, at root, an equilibrium theorist and whether he has been reconstructed to be one.

Would you agree that the charge of systematic inconsistency against Marx acts to exclude Marxist thought from any consideration (in economics)?

I say this even though I reject price of production theory.  There is no tendency of profit rates towards uniformity.

Also I am not opposed to equilibrium as such, only certain equilibrium theories.

 

Phil