[Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate revisited
Some time ago Jim gave us this reference. If you are interested in Cockshott's analysis of the socialist calculation debate, high-tech socialism e-democracy more generally, see his web site: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/ At 09:37 PM 5/24/2009, Jim Farmelant wrote: Paul Cockshott on how the Soviet economist and mathematician, Leonid Kantorovich (who was the only Soviet economist to ever win the Nobel Prize in economics), used his work on linear programming to answer the arguments of economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek who argued that rational socialist economic planning was, even in theory, impossible. Calculation in-Natura, from Neurath to Kantorovich http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate revisited
Not that I endorse an exclusive concentration on economic calculation, but Cockschott's overall perspective can be found here: 21st Century Marxism http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/21stCenturyMarxism.htm At 11:02 AM 9/22/2009, Ralph Dumain wrote: Some time ago Jim gave us this reference. If you are interested in Cockshott's analysis of the socialist calculation debate, high-tech socialism e-democracy more generally, see his web site: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/ At 09:37 PM 5/24/2009, Jim Farmelant wrote: Paul Cockshott on how the Soviet economist and mathematician, Leonid Kantorovich (who was the only Soviet economist to ever win the Nobel Prize in economics), used his work on linear programming to answer the arguments of economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek who argued that rational socialist economic planning was, even in theory, impossible. Calculation in-Natura, from Neurath to Kantorovich http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate revisited
Leontiff also won the Nobel Memorial prize in economics -- not for work he did in the USSR, though. He had great respect for Marx, I believe contributed a paper to an MR anthology on Marxist Economics put together by David Horowitz (!) in the old days. Oskar Lange, later like Kantoworitz a hands-on central planner, showed that on neoclassical assumptions you could model a nonmarket economy to mimic market efficiencies using shadow prices (see Lange Taylor, On the Economic Theory of Prices, a response to Hayek from, I think 1938 http://www.amazon.com/Economic-Theory-Socialism-Oskar-Lange/dp/B0006AO488 The calculation debate swayed back and forth for a long time. The standard view, last time I checked, and I think this is correct, is that Lange actually missed Hayek's point. Hayek is not a neo-classicist but a sharp critic of neo-classicism. He's an institutionalist whose critique of planning is based on realistic observations about the operation of people in organizations gives in the incentives pure planning gives them. In this respect Hayek also differs sharply from Mises, who was ferociously a priorist, though not neoclassical. Hayek is a lot closer than Lange or Mises to Marx's approach. I'd say he's been soundly vindicated. Btw, he was not opposed to planning on efficiency grounds, as opposed to ideological ones, where experience showed it would work. He supported national health care, for example. Kantorowitz's mathematical achievement was awesome and knocks the math of neoclassicals into a cocked hat. It's also true that, as Cockshott argues, he was in many ways ahead of his time in that a lot of what he advocated could not be done on any existing computer technology available in his lifetime, especially in the USSR. However, I think he also does not come to grips with Hayek's objections. Not to put a fine a point on it, with a computer-based planning system running linear program models, you have the engineer's standard worry: GIGO. Hayek's fundamental argument was that the incentives of central planning produced GI, guaranteed you bad data to start with, so any models, no matter how good and how fast, starting with that data, would produce GO. Kantorowitz -- and I've read his big book -- does not concern himself with the quality of the input data. I have a long-standing interest in the calculation debate, as some of you know, but in some ways it's passe. There's no active audience outside a small handful of academic theorists interested in what is now the purely theoretical possibility of a nonmarket economy. There's a small handful of die-hard, mostly Stalinist, leftists, who Believe, but they're really not interested in even the broad strokes of the debate, because they Know the answer. No state exists anymore that even aspires to a nonmarket system, and none is likely to emerge. So apart from amusing people like Cockshotte and me, what exactly is the point? I suppose if you're writing about Marx and you are persuaded by one or the other side you can say, well there exist models that show that a nonmarket system, maybe like what Marx envisaged, is theoretically possible. Or: not. Anyway, work calleth. Justin --- On Tue, 9/22/09, Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org wrote: From: Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate revisited To: Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu, marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: marxist philosophy marxistphiloso...@yahoogroups.com Date: Tuesday, September 22, 2009, 10:39 AM Not that I endorse an exclusive concentration on economic calculation, but Cockschott's overall perspective can be found here: 21st Century Marxism http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/21stCenturyMarxism.htm At 11:02 AM 9/22/2009, Ralph Dumain wrote: Some time ago Jim gave us this reference. If you are interested in Cockshott's analysis of the socialist calculation debate, high-tech socialism e-democracy more generally, see his web site: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/ At 09:37 PM 5/24/2009, Jim Farmelant wrote: Paul Cockshott on how the Soviet economist and mathematician, Leonid Kantorovich (who was the only Soviet economist to ever win the Nobel Prize in economics), used his work on linear programming to answer the arguments of economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek who argued that rational socialist economic planning was, even in theory, impossible. Calculation in-Natura, from Neurath to Kantorovich http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate revisited
The spell checker replaced Kantorovich with Kantorowtz, and I didn't catch it. Please insert the correct name. Sorry. --- On Tue, 9/22/09, andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgebore...@yahoo.com wrote: From: andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgebore...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate revisited To: Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Date: Tuesday, September 22, 2009, 1:35 PM Leontiff also won the Nobel Memorial prize in economics -- not for work he did in the USSR, though. He had great respect for Marx, I believe contributed a paper to an MR anthology on Marxist Economics put together by David Horowitz (!) in the old days. Oskar Lange, later like Kantoworitz a hands-on central planner, showed that on neoclassical assumptions you could model a nonmarket economy to mimic market efficiencies using shadow prices (see Lange Taylor, On the Economic Theory of Prices, a response to Hayek from, I think 1938 http://www.amazon.com/Economic-Theory-Socialism-Oskar-Lange/dp/B0006AO488 The calculation debate swayed back and forth for a long time. The standard view, last time I checked, and I think this is correct, is that Lange actually missed Hayek's point. Hayek is not a neo-classicist but a sharp critic of neo-classicism. He's an institutionalist whose critique of planning is based on realistic observations about the operation of people in organizations gives in the incentives pure planning gives them. In this respect Hayek also differs sharply from Mises, who was ferociously a priorist, though not neoclassical. Hayek is a lot closer than Lange or Mises to Marx's approach. I'd say he's been soundly vindicated. Btw, he was not opposed to planning on efficiency grounds, as opposed to ideological ones, where experience showed it would work. He supported national health care, for example. Kantorowitz's mathematical achievement was awesome and knocks the math of neoclassicals into a cocked hat. It's also true that, as Cockshott argues, he was in many ways ahead of his time in that a lot of what he advocated could not be done on any existing computer technology available in his lifetime, especially in the USSR. However, I think he also does not come to grips with Hayek's objections. Not to put a fine a point on it, with a computer-based planning system running linear program models, you have the engineer's standard worry: GIGO. Hayek's fundamental argument was that the incentives of central planning produced GI, guaranteed you bad data to start with, so any models, no matter how good and how fast, starting with that data, would produce GO. Kantorowitz -- and I've read his big book -- does not concern himself with the quality of the input data. I have a long-standing interest in the calculation debate, as some of you know, but in some ways it's passe. There's no active audience outside a small handful of academic theorists interested in what is now the purely theoretical possibility of a nonmarket economy. There's a small handful of die-hard, mostly Stalinist, leftists, who Believe, but they're really not interested in even the broad strokes of the debate, because they Know the answer. No state exists anymore that even aspires to a nonmarket system, and none is likely to emerge. So apart from amusing people like Cockshotte and me, what exactly is the point? I suppose if you're writing about Marx and you are persuaded by one or the other side you can say, well there exist models that show that a nonmarket system, maybe like what Marx envisaged, is theoretically possible. Or: not. Anyway, work calleth. Justin --- On Tue, 9/22/09, Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org wrote: From: Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate revisited To: Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu, marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: marxist philosophy marxistphiloso...@yahoogroups.com Date: Tuesday, September 22, 2009, 10:39 AM Not that I endorse an exclusive concentration on economic calculation, but Cockschott's overall perspective can be found here: 21st Century Marxism http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/21stCenturyMarxism.htm At 11:02 AM 9/22/2009, Ralph Dumain wrote: Some time ago Jim gave us this reference. If you are interested in Cockshott's analysis of the socialist calculation debate, high-tech socialism e-democracy more generally, see his web site: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/ At 09:37 PM 5/24/2009, Jim Farmelant wrote: Paul Cockshott on how the Soviet economist and mathematician
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate revisited
On 9/22/09, andie nachgeborenen No state exists anymore that even aspires to a nonmarket system, and none is likely to emerge. CB: I know most American lefties consider the Chinese CP to be liars, but I'm not one of them. They do claim to be aspiring to a non-market system. Also, there is , of course, Cuba. And the Bolivarians explicitly claim to aspire to socialism. On China, as I've said many times, China was not a capitalist country at its revolution. By socalled stagist theory, which is only wrong for Trostskyists and some others, not classical Marxists like Marx and Engels, also people like Ted Winslow of lbo-talk and Pen-L, capitalism is a necessary step before socialism. This is pragmatically true given that imperialism with super superior weaponry based on its industrial might over pre-capitalist societies like China or even USSR, will not permit socialist peaceful coexistence and development. This is the lesson of the last 90 years. In sum, I disagree that Chinese CP's claims to still aspire to socialism can be dismissed. --- On Tue, 9/22/09, Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org wrote: From: Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate revisited To: Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu, marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: marxist philosophy marxistphiloso...@yahoogroups.com Date: Tuesday, September 22, 2009, 10:39 AM Not that I endorse an exclusive concentration on economic calculation, but Cockschott's overall perspective can be found here: 21st Century Marxism http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/21stCenturyMarxism.htm At 11:02 AM 9/22/2009, Ralph Dumain wrote: Some time ago Jim gave us this reference. If you are interested in Cockshott's analysis of the socialist calculation debate, high-tech socialism e-democracy more generally, see his web site: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/ At 09:37 PM 5/24/2009, Jim Farmelant wrote: Paul Cockshott on how the Soviet economist and mathematician, Leonid Kantorovich (who was the only Soviet economist to ever win the Nobel Prize in economics), used his work on linear programming to answer the arguments of economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek who argued that rational socialist economic planning was, even in theory, impossible. Calculation in-Natura, from Neurath to Kantorovich http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate revisited
I'm not holding my breath. Bad idea for Zen practice anyway. --- On Tue, 9/22/09, c b cb31...@gmail.com wrote: From: c b cb31...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate revisited To: Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Date: Tuesday, September 22, 2009, 3:34 PM On 9/22/09, andie nachgeborenen No state exists anymore that even aspires to a nonmarket system, and none is likely to emerge. CB: I know most American lefties consider the Chinese CP to be liars, but I'm not one of them. They do claim to be aspiring to a non-market system. Also, there is , of course, Cuba. And the Bolivarians explicitly claim to aspire to socialism. On China, as I've said many times, China was not a capitalist country at its revolution. By socalled stagist theory, which is only wrong for Trostskyists and some others, not classical Marxists like Marx and Engels, also people like Ted Winslow of lbo-talk and Pen-L, capitalism is a necessary step before socialism. This is pragmatically true given that imperialism with super superior weaponry based on its industrial might over pre-capitalist societies like China or even USSR, will not permit socialist peaceful coexistence and development. This is the lesson of the last 90 years. In sum, I disagree that Chinese CP's claims to still aspire to socialism can be dismissed. --- On Tue, 9/22/09, Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org wrote: From: Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate revisited To: Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu, marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: marxist philosophy marxistphiloso...@yahoogroups.com Date: Tuesday, September 22, 2009, 10:39 AM Not that I endorse an exclusive concentration on economic calculation, but Cockschott's overall perspective can be found here: 21st Century Marxism http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/21stCenturyMarxism.htm At 11:02 AM 9/22/2009, Ralph Dumain wrote: Some time ago Jim gave us this reference. If you are interested in Cockshott's analysis of the socialist calculation debate, high-tech socialism e-democracy more generally, see his web site: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/ At 09:37 PM 5/24/2009, Jim Farmelant wrote: Paul Cockshott on how the Soviet economist and mathematician, Leonid Kantorovich (who was the only Soviet economist to ever win the Nobel Prize in economics), used his work on linear programming to answer the arguments of economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek who argued that rational socialist economic planning was, even in theory, impossible. Calculation in-Natura, from Neurath to Kantorovich http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate
CB: Not to be cute, but isn't economics the science of supply and distribution of goods ? I'm wondering now how to capture 'services' in my use of the term 'logistics', since so much seems to be dependent on them. I guess logistics is supposed to be the management of such economies. But then again there is the formal study of how to manage them, so this is a more theoretical 'meta-logistics'. We don't really pay or revere economists for their hands-on management of our economy, do we? If I were a central planner, I would take on the economy as one huge set of logistics issues. I think--getting back to an earlier example--linear programming really was developed with the idea that it had practical applications to logistics, but perhaps I'm wrong. But it seemed to me that some of the early prize winners which I was discussing earlier were really concerned with economics in that sense--of taking a scientific approach and implementing it in European economies and in cross-national economies (such as the Coal and Steel Community). CB: What means tapping in ? smile. Somehow they tap into it, and provide a picture, but that tap in and picture don't allow using it to guide practice and plan. Sounds like some kind of Kantian unknowable thing-in-itself , what Engels calls shamefaced materialism. If the Viennans can't do anything with their logic , I don't think they should get credit for knowing anything. I think the idiom I wanted was to tap in to? Anyway, to sample enough information so as to be able to do analysis of, but to be able to impose a structure on it that also revealed 'truth'. Or something like that. It seems to me to be quite parallel to the delusions the Chomsky had about studying language actually. As I get older I have become more and more sympathetic to not seeing 'logic' as something outside human mental capacity to impose it (sorry to Frege and others). The only ones it makes sense to are the anti-Communist ideologues trying to claim centralized planning is impossible. What a mytifying crock of shit. I think the question is on what scale can and does 'planning' take place, in which case we see that the scale on which the Soviet Union was doing it shows that it wasn't necessarily on any more impossible scale than in a European or North American political economy. In fact, we see it being done on quite similar scale and for quite similar purposes--for example, to design, manufacture and equip a military organization with a main battle tank, to run a space program, to supply the entire Soviet bloc with strawberry jelly (did they really do it on a larger scale than Kraft?). CBWhat, with such a supercomputer, hurricanes will suddenly make sense or be logical ? They make sense now. When one is coming , move out of town until it blows over. That's centralized weather planning. I think the observation is that 'chaotic' systems display patterns and even partial repetition of patterns but that prediction is largely impossible. CB: The calamaties of the US's occupation of Iraq show that centralized planning of war causes mass death and destruction. Centralized planning of production and distribution of goods and services averts and remedies death and destruction. Well the centralized planning the US conducted was in how to destroy Iraq's military and then occupy the country with their own. Then 'free markets' (and insider government contracts) were supposed to kick in and rebuild the Iraq country, ushering in a new age of democracy, pro-western Arab governments of the pro-western Arab people, plus oil-rich Arabs were supposed to be more than happy to pay for the US to occupy them. I always had to laugh when the neocons and zio-iberals said that the US military was going to rebuild Iraq--the US military can't even dig its own latrines! CBWhat an idiot and prostitute for capitalism Hayek was What's interesting is this guy would probably have just gone away, except once he won the Nobel, then he got active again. CBWheres the potential for anti-science in the thought of Marx ? In trying to be such a complete social thinker, Marx's thought does include possible anti-empiricism and anti-positivism. However, I would say in brief that in setting out to revise the science of political economy and in so doing helping to create modern social sciences, Marx and Marxist thought on such matters does not really closely follow the dominant modes of creating and perpetuating the social sciences in the modern and post-modern eras. There is, for example, positivism, experimental empiricism, behaviourism, etc., and then there are the Marxists. A good example that puts it into a microcosm is the supposed differences and similarities between Vygotsky and Piaget (whom Marxists accuse of 'idealism'). If Piaget is an idealist, then he is so in a structuralist sense, and yet he is not really very much like the sort of structuralists with which the movement is most associated. And most of the
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate
It's not a Nobel Prize. It's Nobel MEMORIAL Prize. Not sure the point of the question about the creation of the Prize (?) in a context of the fear of the success of socialism, idea is that the Prize was meant to shore up capitalism by honoring its apologists? Actually the prize in economics is not even that. It has been referred to as many different things in several European languages, but the last time I looked, the one English term they have settled on is: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel I guess that is synonomous with calling it a memorial prize (=in memory of), but could we just call it Nobel Economics for short? I doubt that Nobel would have minded or that he is rolling over in his grave. In 1971 it was officially referred to in English as simply Prize in Economic Science, which is how it is listed at the nobel .org website at the top as well. Some winners have referred to it as the Nobel Prize in Economics in their economics speech (the wonders of the web! never have I known so little about so many topics!). (Not all NMP have been capitalist apologists btw, Wassily Leontiff and Joseph Stiglitz for example). Even some of the early winners weren't APOLOGISTS. Leontief was identified with 'anti-communism' but I don't know if that makes him much of a friend of most capitalists--they tend to favor their accountants anyway. Perhaps. 1969 seemed at the time a revolutionary year, capitalism threatened at the time a legitimation crisis. Objectively state socialism didn't look as good by the numbers as it had a decade before. It wasn't one of the better questions I have asked over the years, but reading your answer now, it comes to mind that the US was facing crises. First, all that debt accumulated over the Vietnam War, plus the loss of face over being seen as having suffered a defeat at the hands of 'communism' and Viet nationalism. By the time Nixon is in office, we have a 'decided response'. The US will cheapen the dollar and make surplus/creditor countries pay for the war. Japan will pay an even higher penalty--tariffs (f- free trade) while undergoing major currency appreciation. Moreover, US foreign policy will shift to affirming Japan will always remain a US satellite while the US should focus on China (as a simple way to offset Soviet power). I guess some who kept track of finance were fretting that the 'big one' would soon happen and capitalism would collapse. The 70s wasn't a very good time for bond holders. Looks like the Obama years won't be either. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate
CeJ jannuzi at gmail.com CB: What's logistics ? Basically, the science of how an economy supplies and distributes goods. ^^^ CB: Not to be cute, but isn't economics the science of supply and distribution of goods ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate
CeJ jannuzi at gmail.com CB: Think about it. To admit that macroeconomics can be understood scientifically is to admit that there can be macroeconomic planning, ie. centralized planning, that Hayek is wrong. So, the bourgeoisie are always going to be leery of a prize for the science of economics. This contradiction also must doom the project of every school of bourgeois, i.e. free market, economics to fail or else it undermines free market ideology. Perhaps, but not necessarily. This is why the Vienna line of economists emphasize 'logic'. They think they are tapping into some sort of subsistent realm and providing a picture that captures the reality. ^ CB: What means tapping in ? smile. Somehow they tap into it, and provide a picture, but that tap in and picture don't allow using it to guide practice and plan. Sounds like some kind of Kantian unknowable thing-in-itself , what Engels calls shamefaced materialism. If the Viennans can't do anything with their logic , I don't think they should get credit for knowing anything. So according to a lot of thinkers following on Hayek, markets are rational because they encompass the totality of economic activity and express a 'collective will'. What the market does is rational, even if it doesn't make sense to an individual businessman, ponzi schemer, duped investor or academic economist. CB: The only ones it makes sense to are the anti-Communist ideologues trying to claim centralized planning is impossible. What a mytifying crock of shit. ^ I don't buy recent arguments that the advent of supercomputers will result in our ability to model sufficiently in order to 'see all'. I'm still waiting for a three day extended weather forecast that is actually correct. CB: What, with such a supercomputer, hurricanes will suddenly make sense or be logical ? They make sense now. When one is coming , move out of town until it blows over. That's centralized weather planning. ^^^ I think the debate of public vs. private is largely irrelevant here. The question is more along the lines of on what scale can you undertake economic planning and business. The calamities of the US's occupation of Iraq shows both the calamities of central planning and the 'magic of the markets'. ^ CB: The calamaties of the US's occupation of Iraq show that centralized planning of war causes mass death and destruction. Centralized planning of production and distribution of goods and services averts and remedies death and destruction. Of course Hayek would look at recent financial events and see them as a rational change, a rational collective action of the market, I guess. ^^^ CB: What an idiot and prostitute for capitalism Hayek was As for being anti-science, as the paper that started this thread states, anti-science has often been associated with post-mo Marxists--literary Marxists and social theorists (although I disagree and don't seem them following mainly from Althusser). That potential was always there in the thought of Marx himself. ^ CB: Wheres the potential for anti-science in the thought of Marx ? Which brings us back to a recurring but much larger debate: is there such thing as a social science? Will there be a body of thought that unifies the various 'soft sciences' (social, psycho-, logico-formal--such as formal linguistics-- etc.)? Will there be a body of thought that ultimately unifies the social sciences with the natural sciences, etc? ^ CB: Historical materialism is the social science from Marxism. See my posts from a few months back on materialism. ^ I tend to take an anti-scientific stance in the fields that affect me the most--applied linguistics, second language acquisition, language education, education, etc. This often gets me backed into a corner with the children of the romantics, but for me it is more a stance of rationalism--destroy all pseudo-sciences and their various forms of oppression. ^^^ CB: Well, you are the linguist, but I'm not convinced there aren't laws and regular patterns in languages, grammars. Clearly we follow rules in speaking. There are definite grammatically correct and incorrect statements. There's lots of science in law, jurisprudence. It's very materialist. Must base legal claims on material evidence, etc. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate
It's not a Nobel Prize. It's Nobel MEMORIAL Prize. Not sure the point of the question about the creation of the Prize (?) in a context of the fear of the success of socialism, idea is that the Prize was meant to shore up capitalism by honoring its apologists? (Not all NMP have been capitalist apologists btw, Wassily Leontiff and Joseph Stiglitz for example).Perhaps. 1969 seemed at the time a revolutionary year, capitalism threatened at the time a legitimation crisis. Objectively state socialism didn't look as good by the numbers as it had a decade before. --- On Wed, 6/3/09, c b cb31...@gmail.com wrote: From: c b cb31...@gmail.com Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Date: Wednesday, June 3, 2009, 3:13 PM CeJ jannuzi The Nobel Prize in Economics is arguably not a real Nobel Prize since Alfred Nobel made no provision for such a prize in his will. It was instead established by the Bank of Sweden in the late 1960s as a Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Yeah most people don't recall that it was first awarded in 1969! And they arguably did this for ideological reasons since conventional mainstream economics was coming under fire in the wake of the upheavals of the 1960s. Do you think it was still yet another time when the liberal-conservative spectrum was afraid of the success of some form of socialism (while both liberals and conservatives have long cherry-picked the weirdo Austrians and other various heterodoxists and libertarians) ? CB: Think about it. To admit that macroeconomics can be understood scientifically is to admit that there can be macroeconomic planning, ie. centralized planning, that Hayek is wrong. So, the bourgeoisie are always going to be leery of a prize for the science of economics. This contradiction also must doom the project of every school of bourgeois, i.e. free market, economics to fail or else it undermines free market ideology. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate
CeJ jannuzi If Cockshott had waited a bit more, he might not look the complete fool he does here. This is still largely an argument based on the idea that logistics is economics turned into a hard science. That would be logistics on a macro-economic scale. That may be, but it is no more a science of political economy than econometrics. CJ ^ CB: What's logistics ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate
CeJ jannuzi The Nobel Prize in Economics is arguably not a real Nobel Prize since Alfred Nobel made no provision for such a prize in his will. It was instead established by the Bank of Sweden in the late 1960s as a Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Yeah most people don't recall that it was first awarded in 1969! And they arguably did this for ideological reasons since conventional mainstream economics was coming under fire in the wake of the upheavals of the 1960s. Do you think it was still yet another time when the liberal-conservative spectrum was afraid of the success of some form of socialism (while both liberals and conservatives have long cherry-picked the weirdo Austrians and other various heterodoxists and libertarians) ? CB: Think about it. To admit that macroeconomics can be understood scientifically is to admit that there can be macroeconomic planning, ie. centralized planning, that Hayek is wrong. So, the bourgeoisie are always going to be leery of a prize for the science of economics. This contradiction also must doom the project of every school of bourgeois, i.e. free market, economics to fail or else it undermines free market ideology. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate
CB: What's logistics ? Basically, the science of how an economy supplies and distributes goods. Kantorovich and others work in linear programming has application for logistics. One take on Hayek's so-called arguments against central planning is that he is saying central planning requires too immense a scale. In other words, you can't run an economy at a macro-economic level. See his essay: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html As for the applications of linear programming to logistics, see: http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch4en/meth4en/ch4m2en.html ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate
If Cockshott had waited a bit more, he might not look the complete fool he does here. This is still largely an argument based on the idea that logistics is economics turned into a hard science. That would be logistics on a macro-economic scale. That may be, but it is no more a science of political economy than econometrics. CJ -- Japan Higher Education Outlook http://japanheo.blogspot.com/ We are Feral Cats http://wearechikineko.blogspot.com/ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate
Also, it might interesting to note here that Koopmans won the prize the same year (1975), and the work of Koopmans and Kantorovich really follows from the first winner of the prize, Tinbergen. And Frisch btw won it at the same time as Tinbergen. Although Kantorovich may be the only 'Soviet' here, he is not at all anathema to the likes of Koopmans, Tinbergen, or Myrdal, the guy who won it the same year as von Hayek (1974). Austrian economics is often heterodox to other forms of economics emanating from both sides of the political spectrum. That is because counter 20th century trends, it eschews quantification (stats, maths), induction and experimental induction. So you can put the Austrians in counterpoint with just about any mainstream economist of distinction. Conservatives, I think, tended to 'cherry-pick' ideas from the Austrians to serve their ideological purposes. BTW, the prize in economics is a very strange prize, with a very complex and changing title. See this take: http://www.samuelbrittan.co.uk/text172_p.html excerpt: But by then the debate had moved to its real subject matter. Some members of the Swedish Academy were doubtful if economics was a genuine science and disliked the whole idea of awarding the prize. In the end the prize for Nash, jointly with two other winners, was approved, but after a majority vote -- something which learned and established bodies hate to have. The aftermath was an inquiry into the future of the prize. It was decided to broaden it into a general prize for social sciences and to bring two non-economists onto the awarding committee. Some changes have been evident as a result. For instance in 2002 the award was shared by one experimental economist whose findings favoured the Austrian type of neo-classical theory and a psychologist who disputed most of the usual economic assumptions. Nevertheless the majority have still been given for research into mainstream topics. The joint 2003 prizes were awarded for innovatory statistical analysis of time series. The dispute about the value of the prize is still running. A former Swedish finance minister, Kjell Olof Feldt, who himself subsequently became head of the Riksbank, has advocated abolishing the economics prize. Some members of the present generation of the Nobel family have done the same. One is reminded of the disputes among the descendants of the composer Richard Wagner, who still claim the right to decide the future of the Festival Theatre he established in Bayreuth. Indeed a few of the economics prize winners themselves expressed reservations, Friedrich Hayek, the free market political economist who won the prize jointly with the Swedish socialist Gunnar Myrdal in 1974, was grateful that the prize rescued him from a long period of personal depression and had relaunched his ideas - well before Margaret Thatcher started to publicise his name. Yet he admitted that if he had been consulted on whether to establish the prize he would have decidedly advised against it. Myrdal rather less graciously wanted the prize abolished because it had been given to such reactionaries as Hayek (and afterwards Milton Friedman). How does the matter look now? A glance at the correspondence columns for the FT will show that mainstream academic economics is far from being the only source of ideas on the subject. Business school theorists, contemporary historians, engineers with an interest in policy and opinionated businessmen all weigh in. It is the Nobel Prize which gives some kind of imprimatur to mainstream academic ideas, which combine an emphasis on individual utility maximisation and the role of markets, with advanced statistical techniques. It has not however in the least increased the willingness of policy makers to accept international free trade or reject the lump of labour fallacy - matters on which most academic theorists are agreed. An insight indeed comes from comparing two very recent books on Hayek. The first by Alan Ebenstein is simply called Friedrich Hayek, a Biography, (Palgrave 2001). The second is Bruce Caldwell's Hayek's Challenge, (University of Chicago Press, 2003.) While both books are sympathetic their interpretations are very different. Ebenstein follows Milton Friedman in treating Hayek as a distinguished political philosopher whose views on economic methods were antediluvian. He accepts Friedman's view of economics as science like any other and thus implicitly endorses the Nobel Prize. Caldwell on the other hand steers as clear as he can of the political debate but shares Hayek's own scepticism about modern economics and its ability to make specific refutable predictions. (Hayek's Nobel Lecture was entitled The Pretence of Knowledge.) He asks whether there really has been steady cumulative progress as economic laws are discovered and improved empirical methods introduced. His own work on micro economics makes him extremely doubtful. And I would endorse this from the macro side. We know that an
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate
The Nobel Prize in Economics is arguably not a real Nobel Prize since Alfred Nobel made no provision for such a prize in his will. It was instead established by the Bank of Sweden in the late 1960s as a Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Yeah most people don't recall that it was first awarded in 1969! And they arguably did this for ideological reasons since conventional mainstream economics was coming under fire in the wake of the upheavals of the 1960s. Do you think it was still yet another time when the liberal-conservative spectrum was afraid of the success of some form of socialism (while both liberals and conservatives have long cherry-picked the weirdo Austrians and other various heterodoxists and libertarians) ? OTOH, if you wanted to approach mainstream economics' failure at basic epistemology, you might start with how their theories failed to account for what really happened, for example, at the European Coal and Steel Community (I suppose at the outset people like Tinbergen thought it would be a laboratory for testing ideas about centralized planning). In terms of think tanks, public policy advocacy, ideological arguments in the political systems and in actual decisions in government, the controversies in economics in the US, UK and what is now the EU were and are often still quite different. Anyway,concerning the Nobel Prize in economics. There is the strange case of Joan Robinson, and why she didn't get the Nobel Prize in economics. She was widely expected to get the Prize in 1975. Indeed, Business Week published a profile on her, precisely because they, along with just about everybody else was expecting her to win the Prize, but the Nobel committee, instead, at the last moment, awarded it to Leonid Kantorovich, and the American, Tjalling C. Koopmans, for their work in creating linear programming. What is BW's track record in predicting anything? You might think that in a Greek sense that fate doomed her. Still, I hadn't known--or at least don't remember-- that about Robinson. Apparently, Robinson despite her contributions in such areas as the analysis of imperfect competition and capital theory (work which was of at least the same caliber as that of other economists who did win the Prize) was denied it because of her outspoken leftist, even Maoist, politics, and many say, because she was after all a woman. Given her research areas mentioned here, it looks like there might have been an issue with her preceding some of those GUYS who did get it in the 1970s, awards which to quite an extent were in recognition of work done long before the 1970s (although some would later go on to make their reputations in terms of popular ideas with arguments they developed AFTER they won the award). No woman has ever won the Prize in economics. It was also said that the Nobel Committee was fearful that she might pull a Sartre and turn down the prize, possibly following that up with a denunciation of the economics profession in general. In fact it is reported that she went out of her way to reassure the Committee that she had no intentions of doing any such thing, but they never awarded her the Prize anyway. I almost think Larry Summers was thinking economics was on the same footing as other logicized, algebraicized, otherwise quantified, statisticized and probalisticized fields when he stuck his own limb in his mouth about 'gender differences'. And of course a man like Paul Sweezy, who was the dean of American Marxist economics was never in the running for such a prize, even though he had made contributions to technical economics (such as his kinked edge demand curve under conditions of oligopoly) which would have normally merited the Prize if that work had been done by someone else. Which means that 'important' work is still done in clusters, groups and networks of people linked to the various institutions of the establishment. Of course the 'establishment' is both good at ignoring good ideas or just stealing them and giving credit to someone else. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate
Here's a question. How many Cambridge Keynesians have ever won the economic prize? Robinson seems to have got herself on the WRONG side of a major argument/controversy with Samuelson and Solow. To the personal level. She even came up with new cateogrical descriptors for Samuelson (while Solow was econometrically incomprehensible). I don't know if it messed up her chances in 1975, but it might have hurt her in later years. But then again she was really at the end of her career by the 1970s, and died in 1983. Perhaps a combination of the book on China (praising the Cultural Revolution--hey, many western intellectuals lose thier heads after getting the Cook's tour of an Asian country) and her arguments with Samuelson and Solow doomed her bid. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate
Paul Cockshott on how the Soviet economist and mathematician, Leonid Kantorovich (who was the only Soviet economist to ever win the Nobel Prize in economics), used his work on linear programming to answer the arguments of economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek who argued that rational socialist economic planning was, even in theory, impossible. Calculation in-Natura, from Neurath to Kantorovich http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf Digital Photography - Click Now. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTDvmTqvznh7BlUhIJXY6nvybwjk7OyITFDi2MJJGvY9xh5noyKous/ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
