[OPE-L] Castoriadis critique of marx

[Paul Cockshott <wpc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have been having an email conversation with Takis Fotopoulos a libertarian
left economist over the last 4 days. He refers to a critique of Marx
by Castoriadis
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The conceptual grounds on which the labour theory of value was rejected by
no means referred exclusively to the transformation problem. This was the
'internal' critique raised by Marxists. I referred to the critique of the
libertarian Left , like that of Castoriadis, who showed the fundamental
contradictions of the labour theory of value (as regards the rate of
exploitation etc), as well as its inconsistency with Marx's philosophical
theory (see e.g. Castoriadis' Political and Social Writings, University of
Minnesota, 1988, vol 2). And, of course, what you call 'genuine scientific
research' is called something else by 'orthodox' economists and vice versa.
Furthermore, the analogy with natural evolution and creationism is not valid
in this case since these two examples refer to rational and irrational
systems respectively, whereas both orthodox and Marxist economics are
rational systems. This is why I referred to the incommensurability of the
two paradigms.
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Are list members conversant with this criticism of Marx?
I am unaware of it up to now.

--
Paul Cockshott
Dept Computing Science
University of Glasgow



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