Re: RE: Re: Re: Historical Materialism

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Davies, Daniel" <daniel.davies@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 7:57 AM
>Subject: [PEN-L:22460] RE: Re: Re: Historical Materialism




>>If the main results of the
>>LTV and or the LoV whether in a quantitative-qualitative
>>combination or relying singly on quantitative or qualitative
>>approaches adds nothing to what can be achieved in terms of
>>*explanation* without them, then why shouldn't Ockam's razor
>>apply--to concepts, not entities?

>Quite.

But this is a perfect example of a fallacy of marginalism.  I think
the
strongest anti-LTV/LOV case that you could make in this direction
would be
that LTV/LOV don't "add anything to what can be explained by"
neoclassical
marginal/general equilibrium theory.  But even that would be open
to the
objection that it was also true that NC theory didn't "add
anything" to
LTV/LOV.  It all depends where you start from ...

=============
Nah, the big reason we all like Marx vis a vis NC GET etc. is that
he saw Capitalism as a system of power and domination exercised via
money, technology, property etc and that it contradicts everything
we think we know about freedom, co-operation, beneficence and other
human traits that make us potentially different from crocodiles.


And in any case, LTV has the considerable technical merit over NC
theory
that it offers a non-circular method to measure the capital stock.
It also
gives some hope of an explanation of the empirical fact that
increases in
productivity do not, in general, lead to a shortening of the
working day,
which would be a prediction of utility theory given any sensible
assumption
about preferences regarding leisure.

dd

=================
As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV has circularities of
it's own.

Ian