Re: Re: Re: : Value talk

[Rakesh Bhandari <rakeshb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Justin wrote

> No doubt I am careless and illiterate, also lazy and stupid. I do
> see how moral depreciation offers a theory of crisis.

yes you are right. It can play a role in a theory of crisis. But it
not what I was trying to explain in terms of it if you are interested
in conversing with me.



>  I don't seewhat value talk adds to it.

I don't understand how else to conceptualize moral depreciation.
Perhaps the tradition to which you are committed does a good job by
dealing with fixed capital as a joint product? I don't know. It is a
genuine question.


> > > As I have shown here by restating the argument without reference to
> > > value, and as Brenner has shown in greater length, value does no
> > > work in this story.
> >
> > Have you followed any of the criticism of Brenner's theory?
>
> No. I have a full time nonacademic job and a family. Value theory,
> and indeed crisis theory, is a distinct sideline interest for me.

Cmon Justin, you spent years thinking through value theory, and you
have very strong opinions. In fact one could easily have the
impression that you think value theorists are desperate and inward
turning.


>  I'd rather think about legal positivism, democracy, or, closer to
> home, judicial admissions under a 12(b)96) motion to dismiss. There
> may be problems with Brenner's view, and it no doubt doesn't explain
> everything. same with many views of Marx or anyone else. Still, I
> think it is basically right.

Well these are all debates we had on LBO long before all the
published critiques by Glick, Dumenil and others.  You were then on
LBO; check the archive. We had this argument.

Upon first reading, I was saying very loudly and in no uncertain
terms that Brenner was wrong to make competition the explanatorily
fundamental variable; that fraticidal competition, break down of
co-respective competition had to be explained in terms of
difficulties in the production of surplus value for capital as a
whole for that is what would slow down the rate of accumulation and
therewith effective demand such that there would be violently
competitively exclusive attempts to realize the surplus value that
had been produced. Competition was result, not cause.

I said then that Brenner had no theory of why effective demand had
proven insufficient for the realization of commodities at value. He
won't take the underconsumption line from Bauer to Sweezy to Robinson
to Devine.    I (unsurprisingly) took a straight Grossmann line. Tony
Smith recognized the force of such an argument a year later in
Historical Materialism. Even Glick and Dumenil who had in their
earlier work taken competition to be explanatorily fundmanetal found
themselves challenging Brenner. Bonefeld, Lebowitz and many others
have recognized the same problem.



>  As I say,I'm lazy and illiterate and careless when I do read, so
> I'm going to go on thinking that until something large hits me on
> the head.

How will you know when you have been so hit?

RB