Chris,
Well, I am agnostic on the transformation problem.
I am in print as expressing some sympathy with the
Kliman-McGlone TSS solution, which is the non-
equilibrium approach you mention. I reported on some
of the latest discussions of this that occurred at the
Eastern Economic Association meetings a month ago.
I keep one eye cocked at these discussions, but do
not actively participate in them. It is my understanding
that quite a bit of the discussion on OPE-L does involve
specifically this approach, which is very controversial
and not accepted by many, including many who consider
themselves to be very serious orthodox Marxians.
The TSS approach does resolve the problem, but
does also have its own problems. But, I think that
michael would prefer not to have an OPE-L style discussion
of all that here. I think that most people on this list have
some idea what the "transformation problem" (happy?)
is about, so I am not going to get into a big discussion
about that. For anybody curious, the lit is vast and huge.
As for the falling rate of profit issue, I will simply note
that mainstream economists who get upset with people
like Moseley who find a falling rate of profit by various
remeasurments of categories don't really have much of
a leg to stand on. Mainstream economists regularly
proclaim about "economic profits" which remove
opportunity costs from accounting profits. How to do that
is pretty arbitrary.
As I have already noted, accounting profits have gone
up and down over time with no clear secular trend, although
they have been down recently, at least in the US.
Barkley Rosser
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Burford" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 12:46 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:9724] "Transformation problem" [was US Consumer
Confidence...]
> At 17:03 28/03/01 -0500, Barkley wrote:
> >Charles,
> > Most of those who insist on the falling rate of
> >profit as an inevitable law attempt to get around
> >the transformation problem one way or another.
> >This is the case with Kliman-McGlone, without
> >getting into the technical details. The approach
> >of Moseley is separate from what one thinks of
> >the transformation problem, I think, although I
> >stand to be corrected if wrong. His approach
> >involves defining some workers as productive
> >and others as unproductive, and then doing the
> >calculations from there.
> >Barkley Rosser
>
>
> It was a fair, if typically mischievous, challenge to ask what people
> thought about the detailed debates on OPE-L. But a broad reply like that
of
> Charles also was fair.
>
> In broad terms it is quite reasonable to accept a tendency to a falling
> rate of profit under capitalism but see countervailing forces. At times of
> a crisis there is a superfluity of capital, partly in the form of debt,
> partly in an excess of commodities. That comes into sharp contradiction
> with the limited purchasing power of the masses.
>
> The sort of technical discussions on OPE-L, some of which are arcane, are
> not necessary for everyone to grasp. The term "transformation problem"
> should, I submit, always be put in inverted commas, because critics and
> doubters of marxism like to emphasise what they see as the problematic
> nature of marxism. IMO through failing to see Marx's calculations as
> illustrative of the fundamental forces which he is describing in a
> dialectical model they want exact literal translations, expecting a living
> economy to work like a piece of clockwork machinery. Who problematises
> whom, is one of the basic rules in politics.
>
> Where the new marxist economists have made important technical progress,
is
> in posing models of the economy that are "non-equlibrium" and challenge
the
> idea of a one to one mechanical interpretation of Marx's dynamic analysis.
>
> I don't belittle all technical economic discussions as arcane. I think
> Barkley's contributions staking out the ground for the importance of
> non-linear processes including chaotic phenomena in economics, are
> progressive and not-coincidentally compatible with marxism.
>
> However, even though "the transformation problem" is extremely boring, I
> note that Barkley does not necessarily imply inverted commas around it. He
> does not appear to think it can be dismissed, as I do, as an artefact of
> mechanical thinking applied to Marx's dialectical materialist model.
> Without expecting him to be definitive, could he summarise in one
paragraph
> which handling is most relevant. Why is it a "problem" and why does it
help
> to consider some workers as productive (of surplus value presumably) and
> some as unproductive?
>
> Chris Burford
>
>
>
>
>
