> >I believe that it is a disservice to Marx to make him out to be an >academic economist trying to work via theorems.
Obviously he wasn't an academic. Maybe you are responding with the prickliness of an unorthodox economist to thwe word in ana instititional context where the expexctation is that econokics is supposed to be mathemaetical. I happen to agree with Leontiff that Marx is, whatever else he is, a great mathemaetical economist. But my favorite economists are not mathematical: they are Marx, Keynes, Hayek, Coase--people who had visions, not jsut technical ability. Anyway, Michael, I'm a philosopher, I'm used to dealing with vagueness and fuzziness and arguments taht work at odd angles, so try me out. My institutional context or was different. I am not one who says that all argument has to be deductive and mathemaetical. What I meant by a theorem is that the point you stated about SV is supposed to be something that is shown based on other stuff somehow, by whatever deveious an obscure bits of dialectical reasoning, though of course Hegel fans think that this stuff is all rational and necessary, in fact, are theorems in what they take to be the relevant sense. That is by the way, the point si that I was talking about value at more fundamental level than SV, After all, for value to be surplus, you need a notion of what it is that is surplus. Also, Marx was not really >trying to show where profits come from, but to show the perverse >consequences of the social relations of value. Sure he was trying to show where profits come from. ARe you telling me that the existence and inevitability of exploitation under capitalsim was not the prime concern of Marx's critique of political economy? I mean really! jks _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
