RE: Re: workers' saving & Marxian political economy

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

I wrote:>>A key introductory point: I am _not_ defending the specifics of
Marx's analysis per se (e.g., what he says in volume I, ch. 25, of CAPITAL).
Instead, I am defending his general method and theoretical framework...<<

Gil now writes:>This is indeed a "key point."  The comment of mine that
prompted this thread
(post 23407, point 3) was explicitly targeted to Marx's arguments in Volume
I, Ch. 25, so to the extent that Jim is talking instead about Marx's
"general method and theoretical framework,"  his comments, albeit thoroughly
interesting in themselves, are not responsive to my argument.<

Actually, that's not so, since I did discuss Marx's KI/25 theory a bit. (My
paragraph above was only indicating the main thrust of my comment; it was
not a summary.) Part of my point was that at Marx's level of abstraction in
KI/25, he was discussing the accumulation of surplus value. Since this was
his topic, the idea that he should have been discussing the role of workers'
saving seems irrelevant.

But if one does bring in the role of workers net saving, as one should if
one want to approach a more empirical level of abstraction, then a Keynesian
theory of interest rates tells us that increased workers saving causes a
slow-down in the economy's demand-side growth (or even a recession) in
combination with a mild fall in interest rates, unless the pre-Keynesian and
unrealistic case of the vertical LM curve applies. (Even Milton Friedman
doesn't accept the vertical LM!)

Further, I argued that if there is an increase in the rate of accumulation
due to workers saving (contrary to the previous paragraph), it is small.
More importantly, it is unimportant compared to the existing stock of wealth
that's controlled by the capitalists as a result of primitive accumulation.
The capitalists' control of that stock of means of production (and thus
control over the production process and technology) and the concomitant
separation of the direct producers from the means of production and
subsistence, means that the capitalists control the rate of accumulation and
the rate of labor-power-saving technical change, which gives them the whip
hand, allowing them to reproduce their control over wealth over time,
despite any workers' saving. The cut-back in the demand for labor-power
(that results from a fall in accumulation or s speed-up of technical change
in response to higher wages) reduces wages and thus any workers' net saving.


>My reason for focusing on Marx's specific argument in Volume I was not, as
Jim suggests below, for the sake of "exegesis of old books," but rather for
the sake of specificity, to make clear the comparative relevance of
Veneziani's analysis for Roemer's and Marx's accounts. [Indeed, Veneziani
makes clear in his concluding comments that his target is Roemer's specific
model in GTEC, not a more generalized "neoclassical" framework.]<

I don't know why we should be restricted to what Veneziani says.

>In contrast, any attempt to compare the specifics of Roemer's analysis in
GTEC with something as open-ended and amorphous as "Marx's general method
and theoretical framework" is both unavoidably and pointlessly one-sided and
irrelevant to the original thread, since I wasn't arguing against Marx's
general method and theoretical framework to begin with.  Others may want to
pursue this interesting and very large topic, but I think I'll beg off.<

If you're not familiar with "Marx's general method and theoretical
framework," there's a sketch at the end of the Dymski/Devine article that's
specifically relevant to the Roemer "theory." I also explained a lot of it
in my previous missive.

>However, the issue that first prompted this thread still stands, because I
don't see how Jim demonstrates in his comments below that Veneziani's key
result *doesn't* apply with equal force to the broader framework he
delineates below, and if it does, why similar considerations couldn't be
embodied in a manner consistent with Roemer's "general method and
theoretical framework," as
opposed to the specific model criticized by Veneziani.<

Again, I don't know what "Veneziani's key result." Please explain what it
is, since it would be easier than finding his article in this mess (and then
gleaning what you think is "key").

BTW, Roemer's "general method and theoretical framework" is static and
idealized Walrasian general equilibrium theory (otherwise known as "bad
economics"). As it's pointed out many times, that framework can't
incorporate anything but purely logical time, so it's not surprising that
any dynamic analysis (such as Veneziani's?) undermines Roemer's theory, once
again calling for introducing real-world institutional detail into the
Walrasian model, once again subverting it.

Jim Devine