In a longer, Project Syndicate version of his musings, DeLong attributes his understanding of Marx's "mistakes" to remarks by Suresh Naidu. I wonder what Naidu thinks about that.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/j--bradford-delong-wonders-whether-capital-now-substitutes-for--rather-than-complements--labor On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 2:34 PM, Tom Walker <[email protected]> wrote: > DeLong also must have noticed the resemblance and requested that I please > don't email him again, "Capisce." I suppose the final word was tendered as > an offer I can't refuse. > > > On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 1:43 PM, Eugene Coyle <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I love it! And, btw, the illustration is clearly DeLong. Saw him once. >> >> >> On Apr 3, 2014, at 1:02 PM, Tom Walker <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> > Professor Brad DeLong: >> > I have long thought that Marx's fixation on the labor theory of value >> made his technical economic analyses of little worth. Marx was dead certain >> for ontological reasons that exchange-value was created by human >> socially-necessary labor time and by that alone, and that after its >> creation exchange-value could be transferred and redistributed but never >> enlarged or diminished. Thus he vanished into the swamp, the dark waters >> closed over his head, and was never seen again. >> > Brad forgot to add that Karl Hussein Marx was born in KENYA! >> > >> > >> > Brad DeLong or Karl Marx? >> > Just a few pages from Marx's A Contribution to the Critique of >> Political Economy are enough to show that DeLong's "long thoughts" about >> Marx must have emerged from a swamp with waters darker than anything even >> the creature from the black lagoon would deign to wallow in. In a section >> titled "Historical Notes on the Analysis of Commodities" Marx surveyed a >> century and a half of thought in classical political economy "beginning >> with William Petty in Britain and Boisguillebert in France, and ending with >> Ricardo in Britain and Sismondi in France" that dealt with the concepts of >> labor time and exchange value and their relationship. Of particular >> pertinence to refuting DeLong's ontological fantasy is Marx's discussion of >> the contributions of James Steuart and David Ricardo. >> > >> > In Marx's account, Steuart was the first to make a "clear >> differentiation between specifically social labour which manifests itself >> in exchange value and concrete labour which yields use values..." >> Furthermore, Steuart was "interested in the difference between bourgeois >> labour and feudal labour," and consequently shows "that the commodity as >> the elementary and primary unit of wealth and alienation as the predominant >> form of appropriation are characteristic only of the bourgeois period of >> production and that accordingly labour which creates exchange-value is a >> specifically bourgeois feature [emphasis added]." In other words, the >> relationship between labour time and exchange value was viewed by Steuart >> (to Marx's approbation) as historically contingent, not as some ontological >> certainty, as Delong claims. >> > >> > Ricardo, according to Marx, "neatly sets forth the determination of the >> value of commodities by labour time, and demonstrates that this law governs >> even those bourgeois relations of production which apparently contradict it >> most decisively." Does this imply that after its creation this exchange >> value is "never enlarged or diminished," as DeLong asserts? Marx notes the >> following qualification by Ricardo: "the determination of value by >> labour-time applies to 'such commodities only as can be increased in >> quantity by the exertion of human industry, and on the production of which >> competition operates without restraint.'" >> > >> > Whatever one thinks of the labour theory of value, DeLong's claims >> about "Marx's 'fixation'" are so utterly groundless and fantastic as to >> make one suspect that perhaps Brad mistakenly thought his commentary was >> scheduled to be published on April 1st. Especially foolish is his account >> of Marx's alleged beliefs about the impossibility of re-employment of >> workers displaced by machinery: >> > Karl Marx in his day could not believe the volume of production could >> possibly expand enough to re-employ those who lost their jobs as handloom >> weavers as well-paid machine-minders or carpet-sellers. He was wrong. >> > Obviously DeLong is not aware that Marx devoted a section in Capital to >> precisely this question, "The theory of compensation as regards the >> workpeople displaced by machinery," the conclusions of which are more in >> accord with Keynes's 1934 radio address, "Is the Economic System >> Self-Adjusting?" than with DeLong's foolish caricature: >> > The labourers that are thrown out of work in any branch of industry, >> can no doubt seek for employment in some other branch. If they find it, and >> thus renew the bond between them and the means of subsistence, this takes >> place only by the intermediary of a new and additional capital that is >> seeking investment; not at all by the intermediary of the capital that >> formerly employed them and was afterwards converted into machinery. >> > Marx reserves his most caustic retort to "the theory of compensation," >> however, for the first paragraph of the succeeding section: >> > All political economists of any standing admit that the introduction of >> new machinery has a baneful effect on the workmen in the old handicrafts >> and manufactures with which this machinery at first competes. Almost all of >> them bemoan the slavery of the factory operative. And what is the great >> trump-card that they play? That machinery, after the horrors of the period >> of introduction and development have subsided, instead of diminishing, in >> the long run increases the number of the slaves of labour! >> > Was Marx wrong, yet again? I leave the last word to DeLong who smugly, >> albeit inadvertently, confirms Marx's prediction to the letter by playing >> what he imagines is the great trump-card of the worst-case scenario: >> > The pessimistic view is that some pieces of (3) will be (a) >> mind-numbingly boring while (b) stubbornly impervious to artificial >> intelligence, while (4) will remain limited and for the most part poorly >> paid. In that case, our future is one of human beings chained to desks and >> screens acting as numbed-mind cogs for Amazon Mechanical Turk, forever. >> > >> http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-creature-from-delong-lagoon.html >> > -- >> > Cheers, >> > >> > Tom Walker (Sandwichman) >> > _______________________________________________ >> > pen-l mailing list >> > [email protected] >> > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >> >> _______________________________________________ >> pen-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >> > > > > -- > Cheers, > > Tom Walker (Sandwichman) > -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman)
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