Re: [OPE-L] book review of Kliman's book

[GERALD LEVY <gerald_a_levy@xxxxxxx>]

> 2) The profit rate in the fully automated economy
> ------------------------------------------------
 
 
Hi Anders:
 
Marx did not analyse the (science fiction) case of a "fully automated
economy" and hence it can *not* be claimed that what AK wrote on
this topic is about the internal *consistency* of Marx's thought.
Here it is simply Dimitriev v. Kliman, not Dimitriev v. Marx/Kliman.
 
 

> Ajit argues that Kliman's line of argument against Dimitriev is just
> dead wrong. I will not go into the details of Kliman's argument. But
> I just note that Ajit and I think very differently, because to me a
> thing which is produced without labour (full automation) has a zero
> price, because like Smith (and IMO also Marx) I believe that "labour
> is the only real social cost" - so when there is no labour such a
> process is outside of the field of economic science (not all social
> sciences of course) since every economy is basically an "economy of
> time" = that is labour time.
>
> When blueberries generate new blueberries as they do in the woods
> around Oslo where I live - and if I like a Jedi in Star Wars could
> pick them only by using a negligible amount of "the Force" - they
> would be free, prices and profit would not be part of the picture -
> so Dimitriev's example has no bearing on the labour theory of value
> - if labour is the fundamental and only real cost to society. (See.
> Marco Lippi's book on "Marx, il valore como costo sociale
> reale" translated as "Value and naturalism in Karl Marx", Verso 1979.
>
> I think I would have argued a little bit different from Kliman
> regarding Dimitriev, but I would have reached the same conclusion,
> that even though Dimitriev's example is internally consistent, given
> the way D. and most economist think - Dimitriev's "case" is
> irrelevant ("defined away") in a Marxian "time as the only real
> social cost" paradigm. In a fully automated economy there is no
> labour = no scarcity = no prices, no profits. 0 = 0.
 
 
 
I made these points many times re the meaning of the assumption
of V = 0.   It would be consistent for you to write that Kliman's
illustrations where v = 0  are "irrelevant ('defined away')" in a Marxian
paradigm.
 
In solidarity, Jerry