http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/29/my-bright-idea-ha-joon-chang
So Chang does not take Clay Shirky very seriously who sees the transformation in the mode of communication especially in regards to politics as transformative. But Shirky's case seems really overblown. Gotta love though how Chang puts the transformation of women's lives at the center of the story, though I don't see why he does not consider bottle feeding and the pill also to be technologies. Had to order his new book from amazon uk. Had a chance to look over Sweezy's Theory of Capitalist Development for the first time in a long time. Interesting that he defends Marx's relative neglect of demand on two grounds: first the distribution of income has to be determined before the effects of demand can be determined and second changes in the structure of the production are overwhelmingly the result of supply side dynamics (he quotes Schumpeter here). Sweezy insists on looking at Marx in general equilibrium terms, so does not do a good job undercutting its static implications as does II Rubin who uses Marshall's partial equilibrium S and D exercises to undermine them from within. All that said, Sweezy provides a wonderful analysis of the price mechanism in terms of its regulation of exchange ratios, quantities produced and the interbranch allocation of social labor. He even does a better job of showing how abstract labor becomes a practical reality and that this qualitative sociological analysis underpins the entire analysis. But most of all I loved the introduction to the book. Here he criticizes the analysis of the wage and labor's subsistence generally as universally best understood in marginal productivity terms. He shows how such analysis obfuscates the qualitative difference in labor arrangements across space and time. Not a bad place to start in my opinion. But boy oh boy is the criticism of Grossman poorly executed. Yours, Lakshmi
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