date:20020205


Justin,
a short reply.

  the disallowing of qualitative change in outputs and inputs and 
setting them equal in price by assumption seems to make analysis 
inherently static. This is why these assumptions are hotly contested.



As far as I can tell, this is just a way of reminding us that any 
commodities out there are the product of labor, an important point, 
but npt necessarily one concerning value.

yes Shaikh is reminding us that inputs do not magically become 
outputs without the toil and misery of real labor. There is no 
production of things by things. There are outputs because labor has 
been materialized therein. And the outputs that we have both in 
variety and quantity are those that have proven to be socially 
necessary in and through exchange wherein the expansion of value is 
culminated. The technical conditions of production do not themselves 
yield a surplus and the technical conditions are themselves 
determined socially:  Value--socially necessary labor 
time--determines the technical conditions of production




Thus both 'inputs' and 'outputs' are the
use forms of materialized value, and we can they say that in the
*real* process it is values that determine the physical production
data...

That's very fast. Why are these determined by value, SNALT, 
merely because they are produced by labor over a period of time?


The input means of production are not values simply because they were 
produced by labor-- my home cooked pooris are not values. The input 
mop are values because they proved to have represented socially 
necessary abstract labor time in that they  ex-changed for money at 
the commencement of the circuit of capital.


  Yet though values, the means of production do not automatically 
transfer their value to the output; any idle time  threatens the 
moral depreciation of those means of production--such that they will 
represent a lesser quantity of socially necessary abstract labor 
time. The very threat of moral depreciation underlines that we are 
not dealing with a technical process, plain and simple, but a social 
process in and through which socially necessary labor time is 
determined.

As John Ernst recently pointed out, it is the ongoing threat of moral 
depreciation--that is, the loss of the value of the means of 
production--that compels capitalists to agonise the working class; 
the most powerful means for the reduction of toil and trouble become 
the surest way of prolonging and intensifying the working day.

Without the theory of value we are are not conceptually prepared to 
understand the most disturbing paradoxes of capitalist development.

Rakesh








Pearson after all thought that he could develop a purely
descriptive/phenomenalist theory of heredity by making linking the
character of an individual through regression equations to the
average character of each ancestral generation.

I don't knwo what Sraffa had in mine, but that isn't my interest. 
However the quanities I want to posit should exist and be useful.


Similarly I am saying that the physical production data do not
themselves determine the profit rate, though they can be used to
calculate it.

But you, and Shaikh, have shown that SNALT does determine it.



Why do we need references to genes when we can quantitatively link
generations with data of ancentral heredity? Why do we need labor
value when we can calculate the profit rate with data of physical
production alone?

It is in the interests of realistically grasping the actual process
that our theories should refer to genes and labor value.

Justin, I would think then that your commitment to realism (at least
at levels above the subatomic one) would have you argue in favor the
theory of labor value?


Well, I'll even be a quantum realist if someone shows us how. Maybe 
the many worlds interpretation is true. But my realism is a 
Arthur-Finean, case-by-case, pragmatic realism; I'll quantify over 
whatever our best science says there is. I'm not convinced that our 
best science says the LTV is true, or that SNALT by itself 
determines prices and profits.

jks

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Re: : value and auto:definitive

Re: Re: : value and price:definitive


Auto Figures and Value: What's in your wallet? 
The definitive Marxist Understanding of Value

Melvin P

Detroit: The figures - production units and profit estimates are slowly 
coming in and by the months end should tell the story of the USNA based auto 
industry. Cut-rate loans and discounts kept consumers in showrooms during the 
first month of the year, but auto sales still fell 5.2 percent compared to 
December. 

The current rate of sales based on the January figure is annualized to amount 
to 15.8 million units for 2002.  Altogether approximately 17.2 vehicles were 
sold in year 2001, the second biggest year in auto history. 

Combined, US automakers' sales fell 11.8 percent compared to last January, 
with General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. each falling 12.7 percent and 
DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group falling 8.9 percent. All three said poor 
fleet sales to rental companies contributed to their January blahs. 
Foreign-based automakers raked in more market share as their sales grew 6.2 
percent, thanks largely to expanding lineups of popular products. Toyota 
Motor Corp. recorded a 7.1-percent sales jump, including an 11.7-percent gain 
in light truck sales. 

The various spokespersons and economist for the industry tend to be pretty 
straightforward in their assessment of market conditions. General Motors 
Keep America Rolling zero-percent war launched after September 11th, may be 
over, but cash-back offers continue to bring automakers more sales with 
smaller profits. Most if not all of it is illusory, George Pipas, Ford's 
sales chief, said of how robust sales are masking sickly profits. Less than a 
month ago Ford economist announced that we have entered an era of profitless 
prosperity. Profitless prosperity is the exact words stated during the 
world broadcast of the state of Ford, while those inclined towards the 
doctrine of Marx use the term increasingly valueless production. 

GM car sales fell 34.2 percent, including a 55-percent decline at the 
lame-duck Oldsmobile division. GM has announced that the brand will be 
discontinued. Trucks were GM's January saviors, up 10.4 percent, including a 
50-percent rise for its hot midsize sport-utilities. 

Ford sales also fell 12.7 percent, excluding import units Jaguar, Land Rover 
and Volvo. The world's No. 2 automaker unveiled a turnaround plan Jan. 11 
that will close up to seven North American plants and cut 35,000 jobs 
worldwide, about 10 percent of Ford's work force. 

Ford car sales were down 22.2 percent, trucks down 7.6 percent. The Lincoln 
Mercury division was off 25 percent. But Jaguar's new X-Type helped the 
luxury brand post an 87.5-percent sales gain, while Land Rover more than 
doubled its January sales thanks to the new Freelander sport-utility vehicle. 


Sales at the Chrysler Group were down 8.9 percent, with cars falling 8.1 
percent and trucks 9.3 percent. Jeep sales were down 10 percent despite its 
all-new Liberty. The Sebring sedan and convertible posted big gains, but the 
PT Cruiser suffered a 36-percent sales drop. 

Much of what made 2001 the second banner year for auto hides the internal 
dynamics of the wheeling and dealing of accountants Detroiter's are 
accustomed to: nowhere outside Detroit are there frank discussion of the rate 
of repossessed vehicles, say Ford faced last year - 18,000 per month. Folks, 
that's 18,000 per month. This expansion of credit to un-credit worthy folks, 
the lower sections of the working class resulted in the December 14 firing of 
Donald Winkler, head of Ford Credit and former scam artist from Capital One. 

The Chrysler Group - a polite way of forgetting its purchase by Daimler-Benz 
and isolating its singular performance, has the distinction of leading the 
crash in auto since it lost its number two spot to Ford back in the 1950s - 
and it was no different during our current contraction in the market. The 
collapse of stock market valuation in March 2000 signaled the coming of the 
consequence autoworkers have faced for four generations - layoffs, cutbacks, 
give backs and get the heck back. 

The Chrysler Groups third quarter losses for year 2000 were 512 million while 
running at a rate of annual production of 3.1 million vehicles. Fifteen 
months ago the Chrysler Group announced its intentions to shed - fire, 25,000 
workers world wide only to be followed by Ford and General Motors announcing 
a year later, roughly 30,000 folks to be fired respectively. The projections 
of the impact of the contraction in the free market - world wide, is 
whispered to be between 125,000 and 180,000, directing affecting as many as 
900,000 peoples immediate employment. The ratio is roughly four impacted for 
every one autoworker put in the streets. 

Within the US market foreign automakers continue to do well. South Korea's 
Hyundai Motor Co. Ltd. posted its 12th consecutive month of record U.S. sales 
with a 22-percent gain. Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. sales jumped 9.6 percent in 
January,

Re: RE: Religing Marxism, was AM Histor ical Mat eriali sm 3

2002-02-05 Thread Fred Guy


Devine, James wrote:

BTW, I find religious attitudes all the time in economics. For example,
there's the worship of the market (the U of Chicago) or the worship of
mathematics for its own sake (UC-Berkeley). But I think it's best to attack
these faiths on the basis of facts, logic, and methodology (the unholy
trinity) instead of simply insulting them. 

Does the unfortunate, and often destructive, worship of abstract 
constructs by people you disagree with, make more pallatable the worship 
of the words of a 19th century social scientist by comrades you're 
engaged in debate with?

there are few people like this on pen-l (the relevant venue). However, it
does make sense to quote the so-called Master:  Marx's theory forms a
unified whole that differs from the standard academic orthodoxy and is often
misinterpreted. 

The belief that Marx's theory forms a unified whole is exactly the 
problem. It is, like the theory of anybody interesting, full of both 
detritus from other theories and false starts. The LOV/LTV is arguably 
and example of both. I think that a lot of people, including some on 
this list, wish Marx's theory formed a unified whole, and try to treat 
it that way. It doesn't. That's not a bad thing. If it did form a 
unified whole I think it would be an inert relic, a perfect museum piece 
from a past master. As it is, it's just one person's contribution to an 
ongoing conversation.

I fact, a lot of people misrepresent Marx. I have poormemory for quotes, so I don't 
do it, especially since it's quite easy for someone to quote like crazy and still 
misinterpret Marx (as Jon Elster,
among others, does so often). (As my old friend Steve Zeluck used to say,
the devil can quote scipture. Elster is much better when he does
micro-theory than when he writes about Marx.)

I hesitate to ask this question, because I do not believe that you, Jim, 
are a fundamentalist. But is not an abiding concern with the correct 
representation of a particular text (especially given that we're not 
dealing with a living author or a legal document or the dignity of some 
people's history, and that our interest is primarily as students of and 
actors in the contemporary world) a symptom of fundamentalism / 
literalism? 

BTW, as Lakatos and Kuhn and others have pointed out, it is quite reasonable
for scientists to cling to core propositions even in the face of
overwhelming contrary argument and experience. And economists do this: for
example, orthodox economists continue to talk about rational
utility-maximizing consumers even though these don't exist and don't make
sense except in a very limited way (i.e., as tautologically true). This is a
core proposition used to understand a more complicated world. Similarly,
Marxian economics can use the true-by-definition law of value to understand
the world. 

Yeah, but that's not a good reason to hang onto a useless core 
proposition. The idea of the rational utility maximizing consumer, 
although often seriously wrong and arguably a poisoner of young minds, 
does give us tractable models which are useful for many purposes. (It is 
my belief that almost all economists, including those who despise 
formalism and/or neoclassical assumptions, carry in their heads and 
frequently use some nice little models of monopoly pricing, prisoner's 
dilemmas, and so on.) And, although the rational actor assumption it is 
often treated as true-by-definition, it also produces testable 
propositions, as a growing body of experimental economics shows. In 
contrast, almost all modern work on classical value theory is inward 
looking, asking whether the idea is, or can be made, intellectually 
coherent. Beyond that, it's no use. Its main function today is to anchor 
a certain subset of Marxist discourse in a distinct and oppositionist 
location.

Fred


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RE: Re: value vs. price


[Ian gave me permission to send this one-to-one communication to the pen-l
list as a whole.]

I wrote:the real-world fallacy of composition (or division) is
crucial: in this context, it says that the microeconomic processes
governed by prices do not correspond to the macroeconomic processes
described and understood by value concepts. This contrast leads to crises,
among other things.

Ian writes:I don't see how the failure of capitalists or their economists
to understand value concepts leads to crises.

the use of value concepts allows the understanding of the capitalist
system as a totality. Lacking this understanding -- and more
importantly, the ability to act on this understanding -- is one aspect
of the anarchy of production, a necessary component of the existence
of crises.

I don't see Marxian (labor) values as normative, except as
representing bourgeois right (sale at value is treated as equal
exchange in CAPITAL).

How is the concept of exploitation, which seems to be the heart of
the LTV, not normative? 

As Cornel West's analysis of Marx's take on morality suggests, Marx
applied the standards of bourgeois right (trading at price = value) to
show that capitalist violates _its own standards_. Marx clearly had his
own moral standards, but he never elaborated on them (he was never an
ethicist): living in an era (not that different from our own) when
people throw around moral slogans and then routinely turn around to
violate them, he focused instead on the contrast between moral theory
and practice. West argues that Marx gave up on the project of finding
the fundamental basis for all morality. [partly because he saw efforts such
as Kant's as so sterile.]

If I had tried to explain to my co-workers that the reason they were
exploited was because of the LTV I would have been laughed out of my
job; in that sense, to lots of workers, exploitation is like
pornography. You can't quantify it but you know it when you 'feel' it. I
think it's a big mistake to go the quantitative route in positing a
viable theory of exploitation that workers and citizens find easily
intelligible, it's precisely why I prefer a labor theory of property
approach.

The Law of Value is not specifically a normative theory. The way I
explain exploitation's ethical edge is by the phrase taxation without
representation. Capitalist exploitation rests on state use of force, on
domination of workers' lives in the workplace and elsewhere, and on the
structural coercion inherent in the reserve army of the unemployed. The
role of coercion makes exploitation like taxation. Now, in theory, this
exploitation could be the basis for building up civilization and the
like. But workers have no say -- no representation -- in any of this.

...

... I'm all for avoiding the pitfalls of MI [methodological individualism],
but I don't see how value concepts help us on that issue.

Value theory starts with the notion that we all live in a society which
works as a group (though often poorly coordinated). That basic notion of
interdependency is missing in MI. 

Ok, but whenever I see the word cost I think of price, but since SOC
means something other than price to you --feel free to correct me if I'm
wrong-- I'm still stumped at how value concepts can explain market
failure better than a rigorous analysis of the distribution of contracts
and property rights and the accompanying politics that led to the
failure. As Daniel Bromley has said 'no market failure without state
failure.'

I wasn't positing value concepts as a substitute for the theory of
market failure. Rather, I was pointing to similarities between the
value/price distinction and the social opportunity cost/private
opportunity cost distincition. 

I was working from your use of the term 'free lunch' which I thought
meant getting something for nothing. If the capitalists don't get
something for nothing from the working class, then what is the basis for
a critique of profit as a reward to ownerhsip of the MOP if we agree
that ownership is not productive activity. 

the capitalists get something for nothing _from_ the working class, but
that doesn't mean that profits simply pop out of thin air. One _can_ get
a free lunch by stealing it, but that's not what the phrase no free
lunch refers to. Rather it means that _someone_ pays. 
Jim

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Value talk


R, I think we have reached the point of diminishing marginal returns. I 
agree with Fred Guy: the work on the LTV for a century has been a  
desperate, inward-turning attempt tos how that it can be made coherent in 
the face of increasing masses of fatal objections, and it's not doing real 
work. It's at most a heuristic for--and not exaplantrion of--the importsnt 
points you make, that commodities are the products of labor, and that any 
society has to make large scale decsiions about hwo to divide up its 
socially necessary labor. But I think we have a stand off here, and probably 
should move on. jks


Justin,
a short reply.

  the disallowing of qualitative change in outputs and inputs and
setting them equal in price by assumption seems to make analysis
inherently static. This is why these assumptions are hotly contested.



As far as I can tell, this is just a way of reminding us that any
commodities out there are the product of labor, an important point,
but npt necessarily one concerning value.

yes Shaikh is reminding us that inputs do not magically become
outputs without the toil and misery of real labor. There is no
production of things by things. There are outputs because labor has
been materialized therein. And the outputs that we have both in
variety and quantity are those that have proven to be socially
necessary in and through exchange wherein the expansion of value is
culminated. The technical conditions of production do not themselves
yield a surplus and the technical conditions are themselves
determined socially:  Value--socially necessary labor
time--determines the technical conditions of production




Thus both 'inputs' and 'outputs' are the
use forms of materialized value, and we can they say that in the
*real* process it is values that determine the physical production
data...

That's very fast. Why are these determined by value, SNALT,
merely because they are produced by labor over a period of time?


The input means of production are not values simply because they were
produced by labor-- my home cooked pooris are not values. The input
mop are values because they proved to have represented socially
necessary abstract labor time in that they  ex-changed for money at
the commencement of the circuit of capital.


  Yet though values, the means of production do not automatically
transfer their value to the output; any idle time  threatens the
moral depreciation of those means of production--such that they will
represent a lesser quantity of socially necessary abstract labor
time. The very threat of moral depreciation underlines that we are
not dealing with a technical process, plain and simple, but a social
process in and through which socially necessary labor time is
determined.

As John Ernst recently pointed out, it is the ongoing threat of moral
depreciation--that is, the loss of the value of the means of
production--that compels capitalists to agonise the working class;
the most powerful means for the reduction of toil and trouble become
the surest way of prolonging and intensifying the working day.

Without the theory of value we are are not conceptually prepared to
understand the most disturbing paradoxes of capitalist development.

Rakesh








Pearson after all thought that he could develop a purely
descriptive/phenomenalist theory of heredity by making linking the
character of an individual through regression equations to the
average character of each ancestral generation.

I don't knwo what Sraffa had in mine, but that isn't my interest.
However the quanities I want to posit should exist and be useful.


Similarly I am saying that the physical production data do not
themselves determine the profit rate, though they can be used to
calculate it.

But you, and Shaikh, have shown that SNALT does determine it.



Why do we need references to genes when we can quantitatively link
generations with data of ancentral heredity? Why do we need labor
value when we can calculate the profit rate with data of physical
production alone?

It is in the interests of realistically grasping the actual process
that our theories should refer to genes and labor value.

Justin, I would think then that your commitment to realism (at least
at levels above the subatomic one) would have you argue in favor the
theory of labor value?


Well, I'll even be a quantum realist if someone shows us how. Maybe
the many worlds interpretation is true. But my realism is a
Arthur-Finean, case-by-case, pragmatic realism; I'll quantify over
whatever our best science says there is. I'm not convinced that our
best science says the LTV is true, or that SNALT by itself
determines prices and profits.

jks

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Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: LOV and LTV




The clearest non-LTV demonstration that there is exploitation is Joan
Robinson's observation that ownership is not an activity therefore it is 
not
a productive activity, so any rewards to ownership must come out of someone
else's production.  But without something like the LTV, we miss a lot of
what is important about specifically *marxist* exploitation.  It's possible
to believe that there is exploitation in this sense, but that this is
because of a technical factor; that capital has a marginal productivity.  
In
order to see that the reward to capital is a result of social relations
rather than relations between things, you need to get off the fence and 
make
more definite statements about value.



I have argued this point ins ome detail in my What's Wrong with 
Exploitation? Nous 1995, from which you might as well be paraphrasing, 
except that while I say the notion of value in a broad sense has an 
important theoretical role to play, and labor time is an important component 
of it, particukarly in accounting for profit, the LTV as I have defined it 
here is false and unnecessary. You might well say that I have conceded 
enough so that I mighta s well admit the LTV is true. But this is a glass 
half-empty/full matter. I could justa s well as that if you admit that value 
is not definitionally or empirically equivalent to labor time, you might as 
well admit that the LTV is false.

Some of the issue between these alternatives may be the difference between 
those who think of themselves as Marxists possessed of a  new science,a 
holistic theoretical explanation of the nature of capitalsim, and pragmatic 
radicals like myself who are cheerly eclectic, willing to borrow from Marx, 
Hayek, Weber, Robinson, Keynes, etc., but who have no pretense to having 
more than mid level scientific theories that may help us muddle through in 
our reformsit ways towards unseen but aspired to radical ends.
I don't think we are making progress here, hadn't we best stop?

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Re: RE: Re: value vs. price

In a message dated 2/5/2002 8:59:14 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

As Cornel West's analysis of Marx's take on morality suggests, Marx
applied the standards of "bourgeois right" (trading at price = value) to
show that capitalist violates _its own standards_. Marx clearly had his
own moral standards, but he never elaborated on them (he was never an
ethicist): living in an era (not that different from our own) when
people throw around moral slogans and then routinely turn around to
violate them, he focused instead on the contrast between moral theory
and practice. West argues that Marx gave up on the project of finding
the fundamental basis for all morality. [partly because he saw efforts such
as Kant's as so sterile.]

I have no comments on the substance of this discussion. Cornel West? It is true that he is an intelletcual giant by any standard. However, as a follower of his writing - of which he decidated Chapter 4 of his first book almost two decades ago to a blistering criticism of me, which I actually love to disagree with, he might not be the man for ascertain a materialist conception of morality and its conversion into ethics under the impact of the division of labor.

Mr. West viewpoint is crystallized through the lens of Jesus the Christ and redemption - which is an inseparable part of my heritage never denied, and this in my opinion prevents him from grasping the transition of morality into ethic and its future negation. This does not in any way diminish this theoretical contributions - which in my opinion are immense. In other word my own particular conception of morality and ethics is no different from the relationship of value to price; the polarization of the reflection or rather manifestation of value as price and their movement in antagonism based on class society.

Pardon my ramblings but life circumstances have tended to prevent me from engaging Marx conception of alienation, man as self, its polarizations and processes, all of which are lements of the theory of value - in as much as value is collective human activity, measurable on the basis of the socially necessary labor in the prodution of commodities.

Is there an emial list that Mr. West writes on. We haven't spent any time together since trhe 1980s and it was a blast. If so please forward.

Cornel West !!! - you guys going to make me go to Church - regularly.

JJJeeesszus.

Melvin P.

Re: Enron SPV's (Doug's theory)


Re: Enron SPV's (Doug's theory)
by Doug Henwood
04 February 2002 20:02 UTC


Yeah, it looks like the rentiers were screwed - at least some of 
them, those that didn't get to play with the SPVs. But now they're 
pissed, and there's going to be a big fight to reassert their power.

They're also going to have to rethink the use of stock options as a 
mechanism for aligning management  board interests with those of 
stockholders. Who wants to be too sharp-eyed when the stock is rising 
60% a year? There's a positive disincentive to be responsible.

Doug

^^^

CB: Isn't the reason this won't go away from the NYT headlines that it was rich people 
that got ripped off ? Same reason that Taubman got convicted of price fixing: he was 
stealing from people with money.

The best result from a political legal standpoint would be if it was found that Enron 
and Arthur Anderson did absolutely nothing illegal. This would best demonstrate the 
inherent corrupt nature of the wallstreet system, expose the charade of business 
ethics. Getting rich by any means necessary is the name of the game. What's wrong with 
what Enron execs did ?

Re: Historical Materialism



CB: I don't think Marx
 and Engels fold all theory into ideology in the pejorative sense that
 they use it in _The German Ideology_ and elsewhere. So, that the theory 
of
 Marxism is not , paradoxically, unMarxist.

So I argue in the paper.



CB: Do you mean that we agree on this point ? That there is no real paradox 
?


Yes, that is correct.


JKS: [In In Defense of Exploitation] I do use the term [value], after 
defining it. see the last sentence:



Charles: I know you use it , but in order to discard it. Point me more 
specifically to your rationale for discarding its use. I see no logical, 
theoretical, or scientific reason to discard its use ,yet, in what you say. 
Marx argues very convincingly in _Capital+ that the concept of value is 
critical in explaining capital. You don't say anything that dissuades of 
Marx's argument.  Can you give a summary of your most forceful 
argumentative points on that issue ?


I don't in fact discard it in this paper; I assume it arguendo. My limited 
critique of it is published in What's Wrong with Exploitation, Nous 1995, 
also on line at the spoons archive. I have been discussing my objections in 
a thread that is jsut warpping up here.

jks



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RE: Re: RE: Re: LOV and LTV


I wrote: Marx uses the word law differently than Justin does. Marx's
laws are dialectical, non-deterministic. But many interpret his ideas in
Justin's terms, proving that Marx was a determinist.

Justin writes:  How do you get deterministic out of precisely formulated
relatoon among variables? The laws of quantum mechanics are as precisely
formulated as could be, and nondeterministic too.

they are deterministic in that they make very specific predictions. 

Fallback to dialectics, though, raises my antennae, because it is often
an excuse to talk a lot of nonsense. I think Marx was genuinely dialectical
in a specific Hegelian sense--he  proceeds by immanent critique, for
example--but this isn't a matter of giving an alternative to explanation by
means of probabalistic laws or tendecies, but rather a style of explanation
that offers a framework for offering lawlike explanations.

Yes, dialectics are often used to speak nonsense, just as the economic
way of thinking that shows up in textbooks is. But I wasn't falling back
to dialectics (and I don't understand why you think I was doing so). Rather,
I was pointing to the intellectual tradition that Marx belonged to, which
meant that he used the word law in a different way than modern social
science does. That's all. If you don't situate a thinker in his or her
tradition, it weakens your understanding of his or her thought. Among other
things, different traditions use words differently. See Ollman's excellent
book, ALIENATION, for example.  (Frankly, I don't like the way Marx uses
words -- as having varying meanings depending on context -- but it's
important for understanding's sake to understand what he was doing.) 

It's good to get beyond a knee-jerk reaction (pro _or_ con) to the word
dialectics. That kind of thing encourages the rigidity of thought. 

BTW, the laws of supply  demand are also non-determinist. SD cannot
give specific answers to anything in the abstract. Rather, they have to be
given empirical content. SD might best be seen as a (an?) heuristic, acting
as a guide to thought. Of course, Marx's value theory -- or law  of value --
is also a heuristic.
 
 I have said as much here. But it's a far more limited heuristic than you
seem to think. It's basically useful for showing ina  simple way that
there's exploitation going on. However, you can do this without it.

as I write on the margins of term papers now and then, assertion is not the
same as proof. I've published a couple of articles about the utility of
value. If you want the references, I'll send them to you. 

-- Jim Devine

FW: marx's totality



[was: RE: [PEN-L:22383] Re: RE: Religing Marxism, was AM Histor ical Mat
eriali  sm 3][is that an incoherent title or what?]

I wrote:BTW, I find religious attitudes all the time in economics. For
example, there's the worship of the market (the U of Chicago) or the worship
of mathematics for its own sake (UC-Berkeley). But I think it's best to
attack these faiths on the basis of facts, logic, and methodology (the
unholy trinity) instead of simply insulting them. 

Fred Guy writes:Does the unfortunate, and often destructive, worship of
abstract constructs by people you disagree with, make more pallatable the
worship of the words of a 19th century social scientist by comrades you're
engaged in debate with?

I don't worship any words. Note that I believe in using facts, logic, and
methodology rather than quotations from Marx, H*yek, or any other Master.
If other people want to worship words, that's their decision, as long as
it's not harmful.

there are few people like this on pen-l (the relevant venue). However,
it does make sense to quote the so-called Master:  Marx's theory forms a
unified whole that differs from the standard academic orthodoxy and is
often misinterpreted.
 
The belief that Marx's theory forms a unified whole is exactly the 
problem. It is, like the theory of anybody interesting, full of both 
detritus from other theories and false starts. The LOV/LTV is arguably 
and example of both. I think that a lot of people, including some on 
this list, wish Marx's theory formed a unified whole, and try to treat 
it that way. It doesn't. That's not a bad thing. If it did form a 
unified whole I think it would be an inert relic, a perfect museum piece
from a past master. As it is, it's just one person's contribution to an 
ongoing conversation.

1) Marx's theory, once you clear out a lot of the remainders such as
Ricardo's labor theory of price and the like, can be made to make sense as a
unified whole. However, that whole has a totally unpredictable element right
at the center, so that it is not the totalizing vision that some decry:
the response of the working people to the totalizing expansion of capitalism
is very very difficult to understand or predict. 

2) in this light, what's wrong with having a unified theory? what's wrong
with a theory being old (a perfect museum piece)? Newtonian physics is old
and unified, but still applies in non-relativistic frames of reference and
outside of quantum mechanics. 

I fact, a lot of people misrepresent Marx. I have poor memory for
quotes, so I don't do it, especially since it's quite easy for someone
to quote like crazy and still misinterpret Marx (as Jon Elster, among
others, does so often). (As my old friend Steve Zeluck used to say, the
devil can quote scipture. Elster is much better when he does micro-theory
than when he writes about Marx.)

I hesitate to ask this question, because I do not believe that you, Jim,
are a fundamentalist. [thanks!] 

But is not an abiding concern with the correct representation of a
particular text (especially given that we're not dealing with a living
author or a legal document or the dignity of some people's history, and that
our interest is primarily as students of and actors in the contemporary
world) a symptom of fundamentalism / literalism? 

My abiding concern isn't with defending Marx. I see Marx's theory as simply
aiding us attain what I see as my true abiding concern, i.e., understanding
the world and figuring out how to change it. Other theories often
contribute, but Marx's is the most important in the bunch. 

BTW, as Lakatos and Kuhn and others have pointed out, it is quite
reasonable for scientists to cling to core propositions even in the face of
overwhelming contrary argument and experience. And economists do this:
for example, orthodox economists continue to talk about rational
utility-maximizing consumers even though these don't exist and don't
make sense except in a very limited way (i.e., as tautologically true). This
is a core proposition used to understand a more complicated world.
Similarly, Marxian economics can use the true-by-definition law of value to
understand the world. 

Yeah, but that's not a good reason to hang onto a useless core 
proposition. The idea of the rational utility maximizing consumer, 
although often seriously wrong and arguably a poisoner of young minds, 
does give us tractable models which are useful for many purposes. (It is
my belief that almost all economists, including those who despise 
formalism and/or neoclassical assumptions, carry in their heads and 
frequently use some nice little models of monopoly pricing, prisoner's 
dilemmas, and so on.) And, although the rational actor assumption it is 
often treated as true-by-definition, it also produces testable 
propositions, as a growing body of experimental economics shows.

As I understand it (and the guy in the office next door is actively involved
with this), the growing body of experimental economics has

Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: LOV and LTV

2002-02-05 Thread Fred Guy




Devine, James wrote:

I wrote: Marx uses the word law differently than Justin does. Marx's
laws are dialectical, non-deterministic. But many interpret his ideas in
Justin's terms, proving that Marx was a determinist.

Justin writes:  How do you get deterministic out of precisely formulated
relatoon among variables? The laws of quantum mechanics are as precisely
formulated as could be, and nondeterministic too.

they are deterministic in that they make very specific predictions. 

Wow. That's a broad definition of deterministic. Are bookies determinists?

Fred


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RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: LOV and LTV

2002-02-05 Thread Davies, Daniel


Justin wrote:

I have argued this point ins ome detail in my What's Wrong with 
Exploitation? Nous 1995,

At this point I must once more apologise for having taken a somewhat snippy
tone in this thread; it is entirely because I am an idiot.  I seem to have
acquired the belief that What's Wrong with Exploitation? and In Defense
of Exploitation were the same paper and that this paper was called In
Defence [note spelling] of Exploitation.  As a result I've been searching
fruitlessly for this non-paper for the last three days and was beginning to
uncharitably suspect that it didn't exist.  A thousand apologies.  In the
circumstances, I agree that we'd better stop; I may come back on this once
I've read the papers if I still disagree.  Alternatively, if I find that I
agree with you, I promise to start a cult in your name and argue with
anybody who I decide is misinterpreting you :-)

dd


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Re: RE: Re: value vs. price

- Original Message -
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 6:56 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:22384] RE: Re: value vs. price

[Ian gave me permission to send this one-to-one communication to
the pen-l
list as a whole.]

I wrote:the real-world fallacy of composition (or division) is
crucial: in this context, it says that the microeconomic processes
governed by prices do not correspond to the macroeconomic processes
described and understood by value concepts. This contrast leads to
crises,
among other things.

Ian writes:I don't see how the failure of capitalists or their
economists
to understand value concepts leads to crises.

the use of value concepts allows the understanding of the
capitalist
system as a totality. Lacking this understanding -- and more
importantly, the ability to act on this understanding -- is one
aspect
of the anarchy of production, a necessary component of the
existence
of crises.
=

Ok but surely we can understand Capital systemically without value
conepts? I was introduced to systems theory before I read KM and it
was easy to see the consonances but value theory didn't do a
friggin' thing for me. Apparently I'm not alone, so maybe it's just
a matter of taste?

I don't see Marxian (labor) values as normative, except as
representing bourgeois right (sale at value is treated as equal
exchange in CAPITAL).

How is the concept of exploitation, which seems to be the heart of
the LTV, not normative? 

As Cornel West's analysis of Marx's take on morality suggests, Marx
applied the standards of bourgeois right (trading at price =
value) to
show that capitalist violates _its own standards_. Marx clearly had
his
own moral standards, but he never elaborated on them (he was never
an
ethicist): living in an era (not that different from our own) when
people throw around moral slogans and then routinely turn around to
violate them, he focused instead on the contrast between moral
theory
and practice. West argues that Marx gave up on the project of
finding
the fundamental basis for all morality. [partly because he saw
efforts such
as Kant's as so sterile.]

Well I don't identify the normative with morality although they
share many family resemblances. I can understand and sympathize
with KM's skepticism regarding foundationalism in moral discourse,
but there's a bit of Kant in KM I think we should appreciate rather
than dismiss. To the extent that KM pointed out  that Capital,
under liberalism, violates it's own standards, is a great place to
connect and make alliances with non-Marxist critiques of
liberalism. It's part and parcel of why I like Cohen's stuff; he's
made a serious effort on that score as a critique of Capitalism
must facilitate a critique of Liberalism especially the legal
'foundations' of Capitalism. It's part and parcel of asking what,
if any, would be the legal foundations for Socialism or any other
non-Capitalist political economy.

If I had tried to explain to my co-workers that the reason they
were
exploited was because of the LTV I would have been laughed out of
my
job; in that sense, to lots of workers, exploitation is like
pornography. You can't quantify it but you know it when you 'feel'
it. I
think it's a big mistake to go the quantitative route in positing a
viable theory of exploitation that workers and citizens find easily
intelligible, it's precisely why I prefer a labor theory of
property
approach.

The Law of Value is not specifically a normative theory. The way I
explain exploitation's ethical edge is by the phrase taxation
without
representation. Capitalist exploitation rests on state use of
force, on
domination of workers' lives in the workplace and elsewhere, and on
the
structural coercion inherent in the reserve army of the unemployed.
The
role of coercion makes exploitation like taxation. Now, in theory,
this
exploitation could be the basis for building up civilization and
the
like. But workers have no say -- no representation -- in any of
this.

===

Well I simply told co-workers that firms are oligarchies and are
fundamentally un-democratic and there's a reason for that and that
was an opening into all sorts of interesting discussion about labor
costs, class etc. You'd be amazed at contemporary workers responses
to the simple question of 'where do profits come from'?

...

... I'm all for avoiding the pitfalls of MI [methodological
individualism],
but I don't see how value concepts help us on that issue.

Value theory starts with the notion that we all live in a society
which
works as a group (though often poorly coordinated). That basic
notion of
interdependency is missing in MI.

===
Right, which is why I don't adhere to MI, but I came at the problem
from philosophy of science and some of the same issues as
Justin--he did physics, I looked at ecology and the ontological
status of species--before I really engaged KM

Ok, but

Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: LOV and LTV

- Original Message -
From: Davies, Daniel [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 11:17 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:22376] RE: Re: RE: Re: LOV and LTV

I have said as much here. But it's a far more limited heuristic
than you
seem to think. It's basically useful for showing ina  simple way
that
there's exploitation going on. However, you can do this without
it. jks

It's also useful for showing that the exploitation (defined in
Roemer's
sense) is a result of social factors rather than technical ones; I
don't
think you can do this without ending up committed to something
which has
most of the characteristics of the LTV.

The clearest non-LTV demonstration that there is exploitation is
Joan
Robinson's observation that ownership is not an activity therefore
it is not
a productive activity, so any rewards to ownership must come out of
someone
else's production.  But without something like the LTV, we miss a
lot of
what is important about specifically *marxist* exploitation.  It's
possible
to believe that there is exploitation in this sense, but that this
is
because of a technical factor; that capital has a marginal
productivity.  In
order to see that the reward to capital is a result of social
relations
rather than relations between things, you need to get off the fence
and make
more definite statements about value.

dd

=

Why not focus on ownership, property, contract, corporate
governance etc. in a manner that fellow citizens can relate to. How
would value theory help the working class understand Enron and
Argentina?

Ian

the philosophers have only interpreted the world in differentways

2002-02-05 Thread Michael Hoover


the point is to change it...

analytical marxists attempt to explain collective action in terms of rational 
calculations of self-interested individuals rather than understanding that history is 
shaped by social classes (collective entities in parlance of rational choice/public 
choice/social choice/game theorists)... 

towards an orthodox marxism emphasizing importance of exploitation and class 
struggle and dead-end (nay, silliness) of academic attempts to merge marxism with 
methodological individualism associated with liberalism...michael hoover

Re: the philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways

2002-02-05 Thread Fred Guy


Michael Hoover wrote:

the point is to change it...

analytical marxists attempt to explain collective action in terms of rational 
calculations of self-interested individuals rather than understanding that history 
is shaped by social classes (collective entities in parlance of rational 
choice/public choice/social choice/game theorists)... 

towards an orthodox marxism emphasizing importance of exploitation and class 
struggle and dead-end (nay, silliness) of academic attempts to merge marxism with 
methodological individualism associated with liberalism...michael hoover 

Does one have to be a methodological individualist to believe that 
individuals do make choices, and that theories which assume that they 
act simply as classes (whether in their common class interest or as a 
result of some common false consciousness) are missing something? 
Understanding the reproduction and the change of social structures 
requires an understanding of how structure and individual interact.

Fred



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value and price: a dissenting note


value and price: a dissenting note
by Michael Perelman
05 February 2002 01:20 UTC   

Suppose that you are looking at the value circulating in the economy today.  
How would you value the constant capital values found in the commodities 
produced?  That will depend on whether the constant capital will turnover in 1 
year or 10 years.



CB: Excuse the inexperience by which I can't call up quickly the calculations that 
depend on this. Would this affect the organic composition of capital calculation ?   
I'm trying to think where in analysis the amount of value the constant capital adds to 
the commodities comes up .

RE: Re: the philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways


 
 Michael Hoover wrote:
 
 the point is to change it...
 
 analytical marxists attempt to explain collective action in 
 terms of rational calculations of self-interested 
 individuals rather than understanding that history is shaped 
 by social classes (collective entities in parlance of 
 rational choice/public choice/social choice/game theorists)... 
 
 towards an orthodox marxism emphasizing importance of 
 exploitation and class struggle and dead-end (nay, silliness) 
 of academic attempts to merge marxism with methodological 
 individualism associated with liberalism...michael hoover 
 
 Does one have to be a methodological individualist to believe that 
 individuals do make choices, and that theories which assume that they 
 act simply as classes (whether in their common class interest or as a 
 result of some common false consciousness) are missing something? 
 Understanding the reproduction and the change of social structures 
 requires an understanding of how structure and individual interact.
 
 Fred

I think Lewontin  Levins said it best, in their DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST: the
heterogeneous parts -- or individuals -- make the whole (the class) and the
whole makes the parts (shaping the character of the individuals and their
consciousness), as part of a dynamic process. Both the whole and the parts
are important, neither can be ignored. 
Jim Devine

Historical Materialism


 Historical Materialism
by Ian Murray
05 February 2002 00:57 UTC  






Ok, but given the Quine-Duhem underdetermination problem-link
below-is not the burden of proof for the indispensability of Marx's
value theory on those who wish to retain it? Steve Fleetwood has an
essay on this in a recent issue of Capital  Class.

Ian



CB: Before you get to that, isn't the burden on you to demonstrate
that the theory alternative to Marx's explains what Marx's theory
does ?  Justin and the AM's haven't quite proven that to everybody
yet.

=

If Marx's value theory is axiomatic and purely analytic how can it
explain? If the quantitative aspects of the theory are not capable
of generating consistent derivations -whether inductive, abductive
or deductive- from the abstractions that are the 'hard core',
what's being explained?  I'm not convinced that explanation=proof
in non-quantitative social theory and it seems that too many have
argued that explanation must = proof for their opponents yet don't
apply this to their own formulations, so round and round we go,
like theists and atheists. What we see from AM's are investigation
of hypotheses that are in KM's corpus and thinking through the
consequences. If those hypotheses don't hold up let them go; if
they do, retain them. It's a matter of discussion as to whether the
hypotheses that are discarded even need to be replaced.

There's still a big Mirowskian-Klamerian project of investigating
all the metaphors, similes etc., in the 'hard core' [metaphor
alert] of Marx's work, no?

Ian

^^^

Haven't you shifted to a different issue ? You started saying that under  Quine-Duhem 
underdetermination problem, the burden was on the proponents of the Marxist theory to 
demonstrate the indispensiblity of their theory. But doesn't Quine-Duham 
underdetermination deal with a situation in which both theories are valid and the 
evidence doesn't help in choosing between them ? If you are saying that Marx's value 
theory doesn't correspond to evidence or can't be tested, that is not a Quine-Duhem 
underdetermination problem , is it ?



Charles

LOV and LTV


 LOV and LTV
by Devine, James
05 February 2002 04:42 UTC  


Marx uses the word law differently than Justin does. Marx's laws are
dialectical, non-deterministic. But many interpret his ideas in Justin's
terms, proving that Marx was a determinist. 

BTW, the laws of supply  demand are also non-determinist. SD cannot give
specific answers to anything in the abstract. Rather, they have to be given
empirical content. SD might best be seen as a (an?) heuristic, acting as a
guide to thought. Of course, Marx's value theory -- or law of value -- is
also a heuristic.

JDevine

^

CB: Can we get into a little more what a heuristic is ?  Seems to be a sort of ok 
device for guiding scientific enquire, but sort of not a fulfledged ...what ? 
Theoretical concept ?   What is the term for other types of ideas ( that are more than 
heuristic ) that are used in scientific or economic theories ? Heuristic devices 
seem to be tools used in a scientific or knowledge process, but not the ultimate 
theoretical concepts. 

Main Entry: 1heu·ris·tic 
Pronunciation: hyu-'ris-tik
Function: adjective
Etymology: German heuristisch, from New Latin heuristicus, from Greek heuriskein to 
discover; akin to Old Irish fo-fúair he found
Date: 1821
: involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by 
:experimental and especially trial-and-error methods heuristic techniques a 
:heuristic assumption; also : of or relating to exploratory problem-solving 
:techniques that utilize self-educating techniques (as the evaluation of feedback) to 
:improve performance a heuristic computer program

LOV and LTV


 LOV and LTV
by Justin Schwartz
05 February 2002 05:13 UTC  




Marx uses the word law differently than Justin does. Marx's laws are
dialectical, non-deterministic. But many interpret his ideas in Justin's
terms, proving that Marx was a determinist.

How do you get deterministic out of precisely formulated relatoon among 
variables? The laws of quantum mechanics are as precisely formulated as 
could be, and nondeterministic too. Fallback to dialectics, though, raises 
my antennae, because it is often an excuse to talk a lot of nonsense. I 
think Marx was genuinely dialectical in a specific Hegelian sense--he 
proceeds by immanent critique, for example--but this isn't a matter of 
giving an alternative to explanation by means of probabalistic laws or 
tendecies, but rather a style of explanation that offers a framework for 
offering lawlike explanations.

^

CB: What's the difference between a lawful explanation and a lawlike explanation ?  ( 
no fuzzy answers)


^^^




BTW, the laws of supply  demand are also non-determinist. SD cannot 
give
specific answers to anything in the abstract. Rather, they have to be given
empirical content. SD might best be seen as a (an?) heuristic, acting as a
guide to thought. Of course, Marx's value theory -- or law of value -- is
also a heuristic.

I have said as much here. But it's a far more limited heuristic than you 
seem to think. It's basically useful for showing ina  simple way that 
there's exploitation going on. However, you can do this without it. jks


^^^

CB: Is exploitation a heuristic ?   Does the other way of showing that exploitation is 
going on use heuristic devices ?

Historical Materialism


 Historical Materialism
by Davies, Daniel
05 February 2002 07:07 UTC


Stalin was in until 1953? . The Soviet economic growth after the extraordinary 
devastation of WWII had to be very fast for it to close the gap on the U.S. (even 
after 1939-45). In other words, wasn't there enormous economic growth of the SU in the 
period that Stalin debated cybernetics ?.

Where is it that cybernetics has had great success in economics ? I thought the main 
gain of cybernetics is in artificial intelligence and computers, i.e. technology, not 
economics.

I guess I would say that it would be mistaken to say that cybernetics couldn't help 
planning, but it would also be a mistake to term Soviet planning history a disaster.

Charles


^^^

but the period 1917 -- 1939 was not one during which the cybernetics/Stalin
debate occurred.  There was no genuine science of economic cybernetics in
this period; much of the mathematical toolkit had not been developed.  

dd

-Original Message-
From: Charles Brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 04 February 2002 20:57
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:22341] Historical Materialism


 Historical Materialism
by Davies, Daniel
04 February 2002 15:30 UTC




dd: (Stalin was of the
opinion that cybernetics was intrinsically bourgeois and beleived that plans
should be made on the basis of purely political-economy considerations, with
predictably disastrous consequences), 

^^

CB: I know that it is dogma on these lists that Stalin could do no right,
but what exactly is your evidence that the economic history of the Soviet
Union in Stalin's time was not an extraordinary historic achievement ? I
believe Russia was about 1/13 the size of the U.S. economically before the
1917 Revolution. Post WWII , despite the extraordinary destruction of the
Nazi invasion, the USSR reached ½ the U.S. GDP/GNP. That means it grew
faster than the U.S. in the Stalin period.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Value talk


R, I think we have reached the point of diminishing marginal 
returns. I agree with Fred Guy: the work on the LTV for a century 
has been a  desperate, inward-turning attempt tos how that it can be 
made coherent in the face of increasing masses of fatal objections, 
and it's not doing real work. It's at most a heuristic for--and not 
exaplantrion of--the importsnt points you make, that commodities are 
the products of labor, and that any society has to make large scale 
decsiions about hwo to divide up its socially necessary labor. But I 
think we have a stand off here, and probably should move on. jks

Justin, you expect us to move on after you characterize my attempts 
as inward turning--this is exactly what the Marxian law of value is 
not! And these are not the points I am after, as should be clear to 
you after years of debate. There is a willful ignorance on your part 
that is disturbing to say the least. You are trivializing what the 
law of value is meant to explain so that you can walk away from it 
without loss. This is in fact dishonest.

And please do not use the hot and heavy rhetoric unless you can 
explicitly name the fatal objection.  We were dealing with the 
redundancy charge which even if true is not by any means a fatal 
objection, for all it shows in itself is that calculation by value is 
inconvenient and derivative. Even Sen doesn't think much of the 
charge on which you seem focused.  You have yourself killed no thing 
in this discussion.

Or do you really think GA Cohen's piece on the labor theory of value 
is definitive?

Moreover, note that I raised the question whether and how any theory 
other than labor value makes sense of moral depreciation and the 
paradoxes to which it gives rise. You give no reply.

And we need to be clear yet another thing. Freudianism and Marxism 
would clearly be falsifiable if people were not to act irrationally 
and capitalist development were to crisis free, respectively.

As Grossmann demonstrated, the law of value finds its confirmation 
not only in the recurrence of general, protracted crises but in its 
accurate prediction of (and specification of) the kinds of 
techno-organizational changes that are needed by both individual 
capitals and the capitalist class-as-a-whole for an exit from crises 
of a general and protracted type.

The law of value which was applied by Mattick Sr to the accumulation 
of fictitious capital in the form of govt debt was confirmed by mixed 
economy going up in stagflationary ashes and  by the limits of 
Keynesian intervention since then.

The law of value is not confirmed at the level of exchange ratios but 
rather more like the law of gravity is confirmed when a house falls 
on one's head.

Rakesh

RE: LOV and LTV

2002-02-05 Thread Forstater, Mathew


Many laws such as the laws of supply and demand are really neither
descriptive nor predictive, but can only really be seen as
*prescriptive*.  This is what you *should* do if you want such and such
results.  (This is what Adolph Lowe called instrumental analysis.)

Subject: [PEN-L:22404] LOV and LTV

 LOV and LTV
by Devine, James
05 February 2002 04:42 UTC  
 

BTW, the laws of supply  demand are also non-determinist. SD cannot
give
specific answers to anything in the abstract. Rather, they have to be
given
empirical content. SD might best be seen as a (an?) heuristic, acting
as a
guide to thought. Of course, Marx's value theory -- or law of value --
is
also a heuristic.

JDevine

value and price: a dissenting note


Sir  Charles Brown

 You determine value as depending upon future condition. but it may be
wrong, because  value which depends upon future belongs to sphere of
fictitious capital flow, such as various derivertives -futures, forword
option, swap etc- not belong to real capital market. In reality, real
capital flow and fictitious capital flow intertwine, so this double flow
makes us difficult to analyze and differentiate two flow and leads to make
to confuse the two flow such as your doubtful determined value. Commodity
value must firstly be determined within the simple sphere of commodity
world.  
MIYACHI TATSUO

^^

Thank you Comrade Tatsuo. 

So, your answer to Michael Perelman's puzzle is that we treat constant , real capital 
like fictictous capital ?

Charles Brown

RE: LOV and LTV


Charles writes: 
 Can we get into a little more what a heuristic is ?  Seems to be a sort of
ok device for guiding scientific enquire, but sort of not a fulfledged
...what ? Theoretical concept ?   What is the term for other types of ideas
( that are more than heuristic ) that are used in scientific or economic
theories ? Heuristic devices seem to be tools used in a scientific or
knowledge process, but not the ultimate theoretical concepts. 

you've got it. A heuristic is a device for guiding thought or inquiry. One
example is the dialectical way of thinking, which does not give answers as
much as tell you what questions to ask: how does the whole affect the parts?
how do the parts affect the whole? how does the dynamic interaction between
these work? (cf. Lewontin  Levins, THE DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST, last
chapter.)
JDevine

RE: LOV and LTV

2002-02-05 Thread Forstater, Mathew



CB: Can we get into a little more what a heuristic is?

Anyone interested in heuristics should consult a wonderful little book
called _How to Solve It_ by Georges Polya.  The aim of heuristics
according to Polya is to study the methods and rules of discovery and
invention.  People like Polya (and those he influenced like Michael
Polanyi) and C. S. Peirce (and his follower Norwood Hanson) believe that
there is a logic of discovery.

mat

value vs price


I don't see Marxian (labor) values as normative, except as
representing bourgeois right (sale at value is treated as equal
exchange in CAPITAL).

How is the concept of exploitation, which seems to be the heart of
the LTV, not normative? 

As Cornel West's analysis of Marx's take on morality suggests, Marx
applied the standards of bourgeois right (trading at price = value) to
show that capitalist violates _its own standards_. Marx clearly had his
own moral standards, but he never elaborated on them (he was never an
ethicist): living in an era (not that different from our own) when
people throw around moral slogans and then routinely turn around to
violate them, he focused instead on the contrast between moral theory
and practice. West argues that Marx gave up on the project of finding
the fundamental basis for all morality. [partly because he saw efforts such
as Kant's as so sterile.]



CB: My take on Marx normative issues is that he asserts many injunctions ( such as 
Workers of the world , unite, the thing is to change the world) , so he has an 
ethical component to his theory. Ethics is what one does, and so Marx's emphasis on 
the unity of theory and practice is the general statement that there is an ethical 
dimension to Marxism. There is a famous letter to his father when he was young in 
which he claims to have found a way to unite the is and the ought .  I get the 
impression he did not use explicit reference to morals and ethics because the 
philosophers and theologians had given those topics such a bad name.  Practice of 
revolutionary theory is his ethics. 

On exploitation, my take is that he noticed that in FACT, throughout history, 
exploited and oppressed classes struggle against their exploitation and oppression.  
Opposition to exploitation is a human natural ethical project ; the is of history 
and the ought of what is to be done are united in the class struggle of exploited 
classes.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Value talk




Justin, you expect us to move on after you characterize my attempts
as inward turning--this is exactly what the Marxian law of value is
not!

Well, I'm out of energy, anyway.

And these are not the points I am after, as should be clear to
you after years of debate. There is a willful ignorance on your part
that is disturbing to say the least. You are trivializing what the
law of value is meant to explain so that you can walk away from it
without loss. This is in fact dishonest.

So shoot me.


And please do not use the hot and heavy rhetoric

I thought I was pretty mild.

unless you can
explicitly name the fatal objection.  We were dealing with the
redundancy charge which even if true is not by any means a fatal
objection, for all it shows in itself is that calculation by value is
inconvenient and derivative.

A degenerating research program often doesn't have a single fatal flaw. It 
just runs out of steam, spends all of its time trying to fix up internal 
problem, doesn't geberate new hypotheses and predictions and theories. I 
think that is a pretty good description of what has happened in Marxian 
value theory over the last century.


Or do you really think GA Cohen's piece on the labor theory of value
is definitive?

I think it's a perfect disaster. his absolute worst piece, showing 
inexplicable and appalling ignorance of fundamental issues.


Moreover, note that I raised the question whether and how any theory
other than labor value makes sense of moral depreciation and the
paradoxes to which it gives rise. You give no reply.

Haven't really thought about it.


And we need to be clear yet another thing. Freudianism and Marxism
would clearly be falsifiable if people were not to act irrationally
and capitalist development were to crisis free, respectively.

? Anyway, falsifiability is not my thing. I'm a pragmatist, not a Popperian. 
Fruitfulness is my thing. The LTV isn't fruitful.


As Grossmann demonstrated, the law of value finds its confirmation
not only in the recurrence of general, protracted crises but in its
accurate prediction of (and specification of) the kinds of
techno-organizational changes that are needed by both individual
capitals and the capitalist class-as-a-whole for an exit from crises
of a general and protracted type.

The law of value which was applied by Mattick Sr to the accumulation
of fictitious capital in the form of govt debt was confirmed by mixed
economy going up in stagflationary ashes and  by the limits of
Keynesian intervention since then.

The law of value is not confirmed at the level of exchange ratios but
rather more like the law of gravity is confirmed when a house falls
on one's head.


A fallacy: Your theory preducts that there will crises. The theory posits X. 
There are crises. So X exists. I have argued, however, that the main lines 
of the theoey can be reconstituted without X and still give us the same 
results. Also, I note that Marxisn crisis theory is highly underdeveloped, 
and IMHO the best version of it, Brenner's, does not use value theory. 
Anyway, I'm plum tuckered out.

jks

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LOV and LTV



Justin:
I don't think we are making progress here, hadn't we best stop?


Charles: Well sure, but we know the issue will rise again on the list. It is one of 
the regular recurring topics here.

Value talk


 Value talk
by Justin Schwartz
05 February 2002 15:30 UTC  

R, I think we have reached the point of diminishing marginal returns. I 
agree with Fred Guy: the work on the LTV for a century has been a  
desperate, inward-turning attempt tos how that it can be made coherent in 
the face of increasing masses of fatal objections, and it's not doing real 
work. It's at most a heuristic for--and not exaplantrion of--the importsnt 
points you make, that commodities are the products of labor, and that any 
society has to make large scale decsiions about hwo to divide up its 
socially necessary labor. But I think we have a stand off here, and probably 
should move on. jks

^^

CB: This sounds like a parting shot in the form of a religious incantation that is not 
supported by the evidence of the last century:  LTV no work. LTV no work. LTV no 
work...

RE: value vs price


Charles writes:
 CB: My take on Marx normative issues is that he asserts many 
 injunctions ( such as Workers of the world , unite, the 
 thing is to change the world) , so he has an ethical 
 component to his theory. Ethics is what one does, and so 
 Marx's emphasis on the unity of theory and practice is the 
 general statement that there is an ethical dimension to 
 Marxism. There is a famous letter to his father when he was 
 young in which he claims to have found a way to unite the 
 is and the ought .  I get the impression he did not use 
 explicit reference to morals and ethics because the 
 philosophers and theologians had given those topics such a 
 bad name.  Practice of revolutionary theory is his ethics. 

In general, I agree with what you say. Unity of theory and practice is key. 
 
 On exploitation, my take is that he noticed that in FACT, 
 throughout history, exploited and oppressed classes struggle 
 against their exploitation and oppression.  Opposition to 
 exploitation is a human natural ethical project ; the is of 
 history and the ought of what is to be done are united in 
 the class struggle of exploited classes. 

Accepting the FACT of exploitation doesn't autonomatically mean that one
should side with the exploited. Many -- including many members of the
working class -- have concluded that backing the (currently) winning side is
the best strategy. 

It's not easy to derive a clear and unambiguous ought out of an is. 
Jim Devine

Re: RE: LOV and LTV





Charles writes:
  Can we get into a little more what a heuristic is ?  Seems to be a sort 
of
ok device for guiding scientific enquire, but sort of not a fulfledged
...what ? Theoretical concept ?   What is the term for other types of ideas
( that are more than heuristic ) that are used in scientific or economic
theories ?

Theory, law, variable, etc.

Heuristic devices seem to be tools used in a scientific or
knowledge process, but not the ultimate theoretical concepts. 

Could not have said it better myself. jks



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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Value talk



I thought I was pretty mild.

Referring to your interlocutor as desperate and inward turning is 
clearly not mild, but I suspect that I shall be blamed for the rancor 
on the list as I was supposed to take the heat for Paul Phillips' 
explosion.




Moreover, note that I raised the question whether and how any theory
other than labor value makes sense of moral depreciation and the
paradoxes to which it gives rise. You give no reply.

Haven't really thought about it.

but this was my reply to your query. Yes of course the input means of 
production
can be said to embody/represent indirect and direct labor time, you 
concede, but why does this make them values, you seemed to ask.

And my reply was that their character as values is revealed by the 
threat that they will undergo moral depreciation, i.e., come to 
represent less socially necessary abstract labor time, and the 
compulsion the ruling class puts on the working class to consume them 
before they are morally depreciated.

This is how Marx explains what puzzled JS Mill:  the best tools for 
the reduction of labor become unfailing means for the prolongation 
and intensification of the working day. Marx explains this puzzle by 
understanding these means of production as values-in-process, not 
simply given technical conditions of production.




A fallacy: Your theory preducts that there will crises. The theory 
posits X. There are crises. So X exists. I have argued, however, 
that the main lines of the theoey can be reconstituted without X and 
still give us the same results.

You're not reading carefully. The theory explains both the recurrence 
of general, protracted crises and the means by which they are 
overcome. The law of value thus pits so called orthodox Marxists 
against underconsumptionist social democrats.



  Also, I note that Marxisn crisis theory is highly underdeveloped, 
and IMHO the best version of it, Brenner's, does not use value 
theory. Anyway, I'm plum tuckered out.

Does Brenner agree that he does not use value theory? As far as I can 
see, he is in part saying that the full value of commodities could 
not be realized due to international competition. But Marx's crisis 
theory is able to explain the onset of crisis even when demand is 
strong enough for commodities to be realized at their full value.

rb

Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: LOV and LTV




 I have argued this point ins ome detail in my What's Wrong with
 Exploitation? Nous 1995,

At this point I must once more apologise for having taken a somewhat snippy
tone in this thread; it is entirely because I am an idiot.  I seem to have
acquired the belief that What's Wrong with Exploitation? and In Defense
of Exploitation were the same paper and that this paper was called In
Defence [note spelling] of Exploitation.  As a result I've been searching
fruitlessly for this non-paper for the last three days and was beginning to
uncharitably suspect that it didn't exist.  A thousand apologies.  In the
circumstances, I agree that we'd better stop; I may come back on this once
I've read the papers if I still disagree.  Alternatively, if I find that I
agree with you, I promise to start a cult in your name and argue with
anybody who I decide is misinterpreting you :-)

dd

Here is the link to a draft (slightly different from the published version):

http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/marxism/Exploit.htm

In defence of exploitation, Econ  Phil 1995, is at

http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/marxism/DefenseE.htm

The Brit editors britishized the spelling (behaviour, defence, and the 
like). I wrote it in good 'murrican.

jks



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re: DRPs


[was: RE: [PEN-L:22414] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Value talk]

Justin writes:A degenerating research program [DRP] often doesn't have a
single fatal flaw. It just runs out of steam, spends all of its time trying
to fix up internal problem, doesn't geberate new hypotheses and predictions
and theories. I think that is a pretty good description of what has happened
in Marxian value theory over the last century.

this suggests the obvious limit to Lakatos' discussion of DRPs: it doesn't
apply to social science in the same way as to physical or natural sciences,
since social sciences are part and parcel of the society being studied.
(Social science will _never_ be like physics, where consensus is possible on
important issues -- even though physics is affected by society too,
especially in practice.) An research program [RP] can degenerate for
societal rather than internal reasons. 

Historically, the most productive periods of the development of the Marxian
research program coincide with the existence of mass movements, while the
degeneration of the RP corresponds to dead spells. There was a big surge
in creative thinking and progress from the late 1930s until 1914-17 or so,
with all sorts of people (Kautsky, Lenin, Luxemburg, Kautsky, to name a few)
debating and adding to the RP. Then, with the split of the international and
the degeneration of the 2nd international into tame social democracy and the
3rd international into Stalinism, the RP became more and more degenerate,
contributing less and less to the RP.

The next surge was due to the working class upsurge of the 1930s, which
added a lot of energy to the RP. Even the Stalinists developed some new
ideas and insights (though some of them were bogus, as with Lysenko). This
upsurge peaked and ebbed, as Stalinism became more rigid and other
socialists found themselves under the thumb of McCarthyism. 

The next surge was with the New Left of the 1960s, which then degenerated
with the movements that formed that Left. 

Note that this (oversimplified) story does not denegrate the theoretical
work of people when the societal movement has fallen apart (as with these
days, except for a lot of anti-corporate globalization work). Rather, it's a
macro-history, indicating the general trend. There are also lags in the
process, since theory (and its publication) typically follows practice and
experience.

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: LOV and LTV



I
think Marx was genuinely dialectical in a specific Hegelian sense--he
proceeds by immanent critique, for example--but this isn't a matter of
giving an alternative to explanation by means of probabalistic laws or
tendecies, but rather a style of explanation that offers a framework for
offering lawlike explanations.

^

CB: What's the difference between a lawful explanation and a lawlike 
explanation ?  ( no fuzzy answers)


The explanations invoked in physics are lawful, i.e., they use preciselt 
formulated lawsto generate specific (if sometimes probabilistic) 
predictions. On the most charir=table interpretation of laws in social 
science, any lawlike generalizations that exist are not like this. They are 
riddled with exceptions, burdened with ceteris paribus clauses, and 
generally fuzzy. Moreover many social scientific explanations are, like the 
explanations in evolutionary biology, entirely nonwalike, but instead 
proceed by giving a specific sort of narrative. Darwinian explanations are 
generally like this. However, there sre some more or lessrobust explanatory 
generalizations that are like laws, if not ful--fledged laws like the laws 
of physics. Precise enough for you? Books have been written on this; I could 
give you cites.

CB: Is exploitation a heuristic ?   Does the other way of showing that 
exploitation is going on use heuristic devices ?


No, exploitation is a fundamental fact. And yes my way of proceeding does 
use heuristics; there's nothing wrong with using heuristics, as long as you 
remember they are not fundamental theoretical concepts that describe the Way 
Things Are. (I was a graduate student of Prof. Mary B. Hesse, author of the 
pioneering study Models and Analogies in Science, still the place to start 
in thinking about this stuff.)


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LOV and LTV


Another point on this is that for Marx value mainly applies to capitalism. Marx 
refers to the fruits of exploitation in pre-capitalist societies as surplus-labor ( 
see below) not surplus value . So, for Marx value is meant to convey the specific 
form of exploitation that predominates in capitalism.   Value is unique to 
capitalism, or to the commodity production and exchange that was on the periphery of 
societies until capitalism. In Marxist terms, feudal serfs were exploited , but did 
not produce value. 

So, showing exploitation in capitalism without using the concept of value misses the 
point or impoverishes rather than enriches Marx's theory.

Also, value relations do not have to be exploitative. There can be production for 
exchange or commodity production, and exchange based on the proportions of labor times 
for producing the  commodities that does not involve exploitation.

Charles
^^^

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm#S2

SECTION 2
THE GREED FOR SURPLUS-LABOUR. MANUFACTURER AND BOYARD




 


Capital has not invented surplus-labour. Wherever a part of society possesses the 
monopoly of the means of production, the labourer, free or not free, must add to the 
working-time necessary for his own maintenance an extra working-time in order to 
produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the means of production, [7] 
whether this proprietor be the Athenian calos cagaqos [well-to-do man], Etruscan 
theocrat, civis Romanus, Norman baron, American slave-owner, Wallachian Boyard, modern 
landlord or capitalist. [8] It is, however, clear that in any given economic formation 
of society, where not the exchange-value but the use-value of the product 
predominates, surplus-labour will be limited by a given set of wants which may be 
greater or less, and that here no boundless thirst for surplus-labour arises from the 
nature of the production itself. Hence in antiquity over-work becomes horrible only 
when the object is to obtain exchange-value in its specific independent money-fo!
rm; in the production of gold and silver. Compulsory working to death is here the 
recognised form of over-work. Only read Diodorus Siculus. [9] Still these are 
exceptions in antiquity. But as soon as people, whose production still moves within 
the lower forms of slave-labour, corvée-labour, c., are drawn into the whirlpool of 
an international market dominated by the capitalistic mode of production, the sale of 
their products for export becoming their principal interest, the civilised horrors of 
over-work are grafted on the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, c. Hence the negro 
labour in the Southern States of the American Union preserved something of a 
patriarchal character, so long as production was chiefly directed to immediate local 
consumption. But in proportion, as the export of cotton became of vital interest to 
these states, the over-working of the negro and sometimes the using up of his life in 
7 years of labour became a factor in a calculated and calculating sys!
tem. It was no longer a question of obtaining from him a certain quant
of surplus-labour itself: So was it also with the corvée, e.g., in the Danubian 
Principalities (now Roumania).

Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: LOV and LTV

Title: Re: [PEN-L:22419] Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: LOV
and


Why is domination functional for increasing
exploitation? The answer highlights a third problem with Roemer's
argument which turns on a crucial assumption of his models. In these
what workers sell is labour, not labour power, or,
equivalently, labour contracts are costlessly enforceable (1986b,
269). This is a consequence of the Walrasian assumption that there
are no transaction costs, including those of contract enforcement,
i.e., that markets are 'complete'. But this assumption is not a minor
technical issue. Its effect is to undermine domination as an ethical
reason for interest in exploitation by calling into question the
explanatory interest simpliciter of domination.

Marx argues that workers sell labour power, their ability to
work (1967a, 167-169).

Justin, this is extremely well put,
though it leaves us with the task of reconstructing Marx's logic. How
is it that Marx discovers on the island of free wage labor (i..e,
workers own no means of production) that the proletariat alienates
labor power rather than (as it seems) labor time?

rb

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Value talk


I thought I was pretty mild.

Referring to your interlocutor as desperate and inward turning is
clearly not mild,

I refereed to the theory that way, and not to any of its advocates.

but I suspect that I shall be blamed for the
rancor
on the list as I was supposed to take the heat for Paul Phillips'
explosion.

Far as I can tell everyone's being uncommonly civil.

note that I raised the question whether and how any
theory
other than labor value makes sense of moral depreciation and the
paradoxes to which it gives rise. You give no reply.

Haven't really thought about it.

but this was my reply to your query.

Well, I still haven't thought about it.

Yes of course the input means
of
production
can be said to embody/represent indirect and direct labor time, you
concede, but why does this make them values, you seemed to ask.

And my reply was that their character as values is revealed by the
threat that they will undergo moral depreciation, i.e., come to
represent less socially necessary abstract labor time, and the
compulsion the ruling class puts on the working class to consume them
before they are morally depreciated.

Ah, I guess I have thought about it, not under that description. I don't see 
why the LTV has to be true to explain this. I have never denied, nor does 
the the most orthodox bourgeois economist, that if you can save labor costs 
by adopting a new production technique, that people who have sunk costs in 
onld labor intensive production techniques are going to have trouble making 
money. But we don't have to talk about value, least of do we have to say 
that value is a quantity measured by SNALT.


Does Brenner agree that he does not use value theory? As far as I
can
see, he is in part saying that the full value of commodities could
not be realized due to international competition. But Marx's crisis
theory is able to explain the onset of crisis even when demand is
strong enough for commodities to be realized at their full value.



Why don;y you ask him? But read him! If he does use it, it's well-hideen. 
This supports my view that value is a fifth wheel.

jks

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Re: value and price: a dissenting note

In a message dated 2/5/2002 11:57:50 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Suppose that you are looking at the value circulating in the economy today.
How would you value the constant capital values found in the commodities
produced? That will depend on whether the constant capital will turnover in 1
year or 10 years.

In my opinion to calculate the total world social capital and that portion of it allocated to constant capital as opposed to living wages, one would have to use the data from the evolution of social production under capitalist relations. Specifically, points of demarcation would indicate each quantitative line of demarcation in the course of the completion of the unity of the world market.

This is to say that the ratio between what portion of capital is allocated to living labor and what portion to constant capital only exists as a qualitative definition after the completion of the unity of the world market and the emergence of a new qualitative feature that indicates that no qualitative growth can take place in the expansion of the market under capital. Generally speaking the ending of the era of colonialism and neocolonialism, as a principle force in capital accumulation indicates the qualitative unity of the world market. The was fundamentally completed by the 1980s, although the exceptions to the rule prove the rule.

Quantitative and qualitative measurements are given life based on a specific trajectory that outline the historical process. The starting point is the formation of scattered commodity production under feudalism in transition to capitalist commodity production and the determination of price as a manifestation of the laboring process.

I don't assert that price is a form of value but rather a manifestation of value as it assumed the manifestation of exchange under specific historical conditions. To determine the magnitude of value in the production of the total world of commodities one must incorporate the fact of the entire world population being converted into proletarians, with no property other than the sell of their labor power and the absolute impossibility of the world social total of labor power being deployed to expand capital.

This was not the case in the time of Marx. What potion of the world total labor power is deployed to produce what commodities? What potion of the total labor power is deployed in the actual production of commodities versus the cost of the administration of production compared to 10 years ago; 50 years ago; 100 years ago? What are the population figures of the world in which the capitalist market operated 50 years ago or 100 years ago?

In my opinion the framework is not hard to solve, but someone has to sit down and do the actual computations that incorporate the various stages in the qualitative and quantitative growth of capitalist production relations.

Within this framework value as socially necessary labor in the product of commodities come to life. Me? Such an undertaking is honrable, but outdside my inclination.

Hey, where is Cornel West email address - anyone?

Melvin

Re: LOV and LTV




Another point on this is that for Marx value mainly applies to 
capitalism. Marx refers to the fruits of exploitation in pre-capitalist 
societies as surplus-labor ( see below) not surplus value . So, for 
Marx value is meant to convey the specific form of exploitation that 
predominates in capitalism.   Value is unique to capitalism, or to the 
commodity production and exchange that was on the periphery of societies 
until capitalism. In Marxist terms, feudal serfs were exploited , but did 
not produce value.

So, showing exploitation in capitalism without using the concept of value 
misses the point or impoverishes rather than enriches Marx's theory.

I discuss this is What's Wrong with Exploitation?, look it up, and see if 
you disagree. jks




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Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: LOV and LTV



  I have said as much here. But it's a far more limited heuristic than you
seem to think. It's basically useful for showing ina  simple way that
there's exploitation going on. However, you can do this without it.

as I write on the margins of term papers now and then, assertion is not the
same as proof. I've published a couple of articles about the utility of
value. If you want the references, I'll send them to you.


Right, Professor. I used to be a Professor too, and I think I may have heard 
of the concept. I also think I have argued the point. I would very much 
appreciate if you would send me the _papers_ (snail mail: 2227 Lincolnwood 
Dr. Evanston IL 60201). I lack easy access to a U library, not being a 
Professor anymore. I will do the same, if you like, with the papers I have 
written attacking the utility of the LTV or showing that we can do without 
it.

jks

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Re: Re: LOV and LTV

2002-02-05 Thread Romain Kroes


 I discuss this is What's Wrong with Exploitation?, look it up, and see if
 you disagree. jks

What is wrong is endegenous accumulation which is enabled by exploitation
as the profit source. And if endogenous accumulation is possible, capitalism
can not experience crises. Rosa Luxemburg understood that, ninety years ago.

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: LOV and LTV


JKS writes:  I have said as much here. But it's [the Marxian Law of Value
is] a far more limited heuristic than you seem to think. It's basically
useful for showing ina simple way that there's exploitation going on.
However, you can do this without it.

quoth me: as I write on the margins of term papers now and then, assertion
is not the same as proof. I've published a couple of articles about the
utility of value. If you want the references, I'll send them to you.

he responds: Right, Professor. I used to be a Professor too, and I think I
may have heard of the concept. I also think I have argued the point.

dunno. It seems that you rest too much on your laurels rather than your
logic, citing published articles rather than explaining your point of view,
your assumptions, how they are applied, etc. 

I would very much appreciate if you would send me the _papers_ (snail mail:
ADDRESS SUPPRESSSED TO PRESERVE PRIVACY). 

They're in the snail-mail. 
JDevine

Heuristics Re: RE: LOV and LTV

2002-02-05 Thread Carrol Cox


A wonderful story on heuristics.

Back in the fall of 1970 I got subpoened by a legislative commit6ee
investigating campus disorders. They were a bunch of buffoons -- as
shown beautifully by their interrogation of a professor of electrical
engineering from the U of I. He was a German emigre and stepped right
out of a cartoon of a kindly old professor.

The background was that for many years he had taught a quiet course in
the Engineering school on heuristics, in which only engineering students
enrolled. As part of the jazzing up of distribution requirements back in
the late '60s they made his course available to the general student
body. The idea he came up with was to let the students choose their own
goal, it could be anything sensible or not, and then their semester
project would be to establish how they would work out the means to that
end. They came up with some doozies. How to make a fortune selling
marijuana. How to blow up the student union building. All sorts of
sixtyish projects. The good Illinois senators decided that it was all
a commie plot hauled him down to springfield to testify. The high point
came when they began grilling him on those students who had,
purportedly, refused to carry out the project. The Illinois Legislators
(name for one of the lower forms of life) obviously thought that he had
assigned subversive topics and that some patriotic students had refused
to carry out the nefarious work. His reply (in a gentle German accent
but very clear): I'm sorry, zey vas just lazy bums!.

Carrol

BLS Daily Report

2002-02-05 Thread Richardson_D


BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2002:

The Bush administration's budget request for fiscal year 2003 includes
$511.1 million dollars for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an increase of
$21.5 million over FY 2002, and 2,529 FTE, the same level as FY 2002 .
Included in the request is $5.9 million for modernizing the computing
systems of the Producer Price Index and International Price Program, and
making important improvements to both programs.  In FY 2003, BLS will
continue to develop monthly estimates on the numbers of separations, new
hires, and current job openings for the economy as a whole and major
industry groupings.  In conjunction with the Census Bureau, BLS will begin
in FY 2003 to conduct the American Time-Use Survey.  BLS will also implement
the conversion of all national, State, and area estimates to the North
American Industry Classification System, including reconstruction of
historical time series, and complete the 4-year phase-in of the Current
Employment Survey (CES) sample redesign.  The entire CES program will be
based on a probability sample design for the first time.  In addition, BLS
will continue to improve the quality of estimates produced by the Local Area
Unemployment Statistics program, and to develop the capability to produce
additional demographic data at the local level.  The BLS request includes
$223.0 million and 497 FTE for the Labor Force Statistics program. The FY
2003 request includes $5.9 million to modernize the computing systems for
monthly processing of the PPI and U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes, and
to make important improvements in both programs, such as annual weight
updates to the U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes and experimental PPIs
for goods and services that will provide the first economy-wide measure of
changes in producer prices.  The BLS request includes $160.7 million and
1,097 FTE for the Prices and Living Conditions program.  In FY 2003, BLS
will continue its ongoing plan to update the sample of establishments that
is used to produce the local area pay data, the Employment Cost Index, and
the Employee Benefits Survey.  BLS also will publish the results of the 2001
Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses and 2002 Census of Fatal
Occupational Injuries.  The BLS request includes $76.4 million and 579 FTE
for the Compensation and Working Conditions program.  In FY 2003, BLS will
publish new measures of labor productivity and unit labor costs for 2
service-producing industries. BLS also will develop a new procedure for
adjusting hours collected in the Current Employment Statistics survey from
an hours-paid basis to an hours-at-work basis, and conduct a study of the
family from an international perspective, including demographic trends and
the work/family relationship.  The BLS request includes $10.0 million and 81
FTE for the Productivity and Technology program.  The BLS request also
includes $28.1 million and 214 FTE for the Executive Direction program.  It
provides agency-wide policy and management direction, including all
centralized support services in the administrative, publications, computer
systems and statistical methods research areas (Daily Labor Report, page
E-47). General Federal budget articles including insights on funding
requests for the Department of Labor in The Washington Post (page A13), The
New York Times (page A1); The Wall Street Journal (page A8). 

Surveys indicate that family and medical leave is becoming a more important
part of the experience of employers and employees, according to Jane
Waldfogel, writing in the Monthly Labor Review.  Waldfogel is associate
professor of social work and public affairs at Columbia University School of
Social Work in New York.  Her findings are based on the Department of
Labor's surveys of employees and businesses in 2000.  On the employer side,
more establishments are offering family and medical leave policies, in many
instances going beyond what is required by the Family and Medical Leave
Act, she said.  Two-thirds of covered establishments are finding the act
easy to administer and an even larger majority reports that the FMLA has had
no adverse effects on their businesses. On the employee side, according to
Waldfogel, workers are using FMLA leave in increasing numbers and the
proportion of those who say they needed leave but were not able to take it
is decreasing. (Carol Kleiman,
http:www.chicagotribune.com/.../chi-0202050257feb05.column?coll=chi%2Dbusine
ss%2Dhe).

Orders to U.S. factories rose by 1.2 percent in December, suggesting that
the nation's battered manufacturing sector may see better days ahead, writes
Jeannine Aversa, Associated Press,
http://www.nandotimes.com/business/story/240396p-2287416c.html). The advance
in factory orders reported today by the Commerce Department came after
orders fell by 4.3 percent in November.  Manufacturers have borne the brunt
of the recession that began in March.  To cope, they have sharply cut

RE: Re: Re: RE: Export tax subsidies that aren't?

2002-02-05 Thread Max Sawicky


 In a world in which transaction demand on the current account was the sole
 basis for forex markets, with constant PPP and never a whiff of pricing to
 market, then this type of analysis would make sense.  We're not
 in that world, however. Peter



AND . . . . ???

mbs

Re: Stalinist Proyect


CB: My thought on this is that the Cubans are as or more scared than most 
anti-imperialists around the world at the uncertainty and openendedness of the proto 
and neo-fascist that the Bushites are in the process of developing. They are probably 
concerned not to give the U.S. any excuse at all for invading Cuba under the pretexts 
of the new , hypocritical anti- terrorist doctrines.

Karl: It is not a matter of giving the US any excuse for invading Cuba. To suggest 
that playing the cute hoor will emancipate Cuba from the necessities of the class 
struggle constitutes the politics of reactionary utopia. Washington did not, as I have 
said before, bomb Afghanistan because of the existence of few morally  decadent 
figures in the leadership of the USA. Washington bombed Afghanistan and crushed the 
Taliban state because  the specifics of the objective conditions required such action 
in the class interests of US imperialism. US imperialism can only maintain and develop 
itself by engaging in such imperialist savagery. If it were not to engage in such 
activity it would not be the enormous  world capitalist power that it is. If it did 
not enslave hundreds of thousands of niggers it would not be the power it is today. 
If it did not engage in systematic and sustained attack on the Native American in 
which probably over ten million Native Americans were wiped ou!
t it would not be the power it is today.If it did not engage in a civil war in the 
middle of the 19th century that led to over a million fatalities it would not be the 
power it is today. Then there is its Vietnam war and its sustained racism.

Regards
Karl Carlile (Global Communist Group)
Be free to join our communism mailing list 
at http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/

Re: Re: Re: Value talk


JKS: Rubbish. We can say, as I do, that capitalsim is exploitative, unfair, and 
unnecessary, and needs to be replaced, without adiopting a value framework. 
Not adopting that framework does not stuck us with demanding only higher 
wages.

Karl: Dountlessly Justin can say what he likes. However that is neither here nor there 
and of no political or ideological significance. That Justin thinks otherwise is 
neither here nor there too. Marx through the value form was able to establish the 
historical limits of capital and the historical need for communism. Capital is an 
exposition of the historical obsolesence of capitalism. It is this that means the 
conditions for communism exist. With Capital Marx demonstrated the objective necessity 
of capitalims. He demonstrated that the struggle for communism is not a merely 
subjective crusade based on subjectivist ethics and morality. 

It is not enough to claim that capitalism is exploitative. It must be explained how it 
is exploitative. Marx did just that. By establishing the limits of the value form 
itself and the value form in the specific form of capital he made a great contribution 
to the development of communism.

Regards
Karl Carlile (Global Communist Group)
Be free to join our communism mailing list 
at http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/

US forces carry out cold-blooded murder at Kandahar



Afghanistan: US forces carry out cold-blooded murder at Kandahar hospital
By Peter Symonds
1 February 2002


In a one-sided battle in Kandahar on Monday, a US-led military force shot and killed 
six foreign Taliban supporters who had been barricaded into a ward of the Mirwais 
hospital since early December. The US military put the incident down to the 
intransigence of the six and their desire to be Islamic martyrs. But if one strips 
away the obfuscations, half-truths and bald-faced lies, what took place was another 
case of cold-blooded murder.

According to the official account, the whole operation was carried out by 100 Afghan 
militia belonging to Kandahar governor Gul Agha Shirzai-advised by squad of US 
special forces and snipers. An initial attack on the Arabs began in the early hours 
of the morning and was driven back.

Another assault began around 1.45pm. Snipers crawled into position, soldiers broke in 
through the hospital windows and the sound of stun grenades, pistol fire and automatic 
weapons was heard by journalists gathered outside. Three quarters of an hour later, it 
was all over. The result: all six Al Qaeda were dead; several Afghan militiamen were 
wounded, one seriously.

Major Chris Miller, the US officer-in-charge, told journalists: Up to the last 
minute, we told every man to surrender. But none of them listened. These Arabs fought 
to the death. Khalid Pashtun, senior adviser to Gul Agha, parroted the same line: It 
is all over. They fought until the last drop of their blood. We gave them an ultimatum 
and we said their lives would be spared, but they would not listen. We had no other 
choice.

As far as Miller and the US military were concerned, the case was closed-the Arabs 
got what they wanted... and deserved. Some of his troops were sporting I love New 
York badges and New York Yankee baseball caps-an indication that they were out for 
revenge... and got it.

What really took place?

It is not possible to answer every question from the available press reports. All of 
the articles, in one way or another, echo the official position-hardened Islamic 
terrorists... intent on becoming martyrs... died as a result. Nothing is rigorously 
questioned or probed. Any more critical observations appear as afterthoughts or 
nagging doubts. Even by sifting these accounts, however, a different story emerges.

Who were these six and were they Al Qaeda members?

According to one of the hospital staff, Dr Musa, they were all young men-between 17 
and 25. They were what remained of a group of 19 wounded foreign Taliban fighters 
trapped in the hospital in early December, following the collapse of the previous 
regime. The rest had fled, had been killed or arrested. Those who remained were the 
most seriously injured.

The labels Al Qaeda, international terrorist, and Arab are applied so 
interchangeably in the media to all foreign Taliban supporters that it is impossible 
to say what their affiliations were with any certainty. Reportedly the six came from 
Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Yemen. Their age indicates that the majority, if not all, 
were not hardened Al Qaeda members, but impressionable young men who came to 
Afghanistan seeking to defend the Taliban regime. The very fact that they were left 
behind indicates their insignificance to Osama bin Laden.

Why did they hold out?

A number of reasons may have influenced their unwillingness to surrender, not least 
the reputation of newly installed governor and US ally Gul Agha. An article in the New 
York Times on January 6 describes the warlord as a backward thug who rules his own 
militia with bullying and beatings, and metes out far worse to his enemies. Before 
marching on Kandahar, he had exhorted his troops to show no mercy to Arabs and 
Pakistanis and had been good to his word when he slaughtered foreign Taliban 
supporters at Kandahar airport.

The six Taliban supporters were boxed into a corner. Two of their fellow Arabs-in 
fact Uighurs from China-had been tricked by hospital staff and captured. Two weeks 
ago, at the instigation of the US military, the hospital had cut off their food 
supplies-a move that the Red Cross condemned as inhumane. According to the hospital's 
catering manager, Mohammad Rasul, they had only one Russian-made pistol and a number 
of grenades... some were badly wounded. One had lost a leg and others had been hit in 
the stomach.

It is not even clear that the six understood the calls for their surrender on Monday. 
Gul Agha's spokesman explained that they had been hailed through loudspeakers but 
failed to say in what language. As if by way of an afterthought, he added that they 
had been sent a videotape in Arabic calling on them to give up.

Did they fight to the death?

To what extent any genuine fight took place is highly questionable. Having botched the 
first attack, the US and Afghan troops called up fire engines to pump water into the 
rooms where the Arabs were holed up. A debate took place

what's going to happen?


For anyone interested, I just gave a talk on what's going to happen to the
U.S. economy to the Loyola Marymount University student economics society.
My notes can be found at:
http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/faculty/jdevine/talks/ESTalk020502.htm

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: Export tax subsidies that aren't?

2002-02-05 Thread Peter Dorman


Well, we have theories of speculative dynamics in asset markets, and we have
case studies in policy outcomes for countries facing BOP/forex issues, and there
are Thirwall's Post Keynesian Lance Taylor's structuralist approaches.  Am I
missing anything?

The main point, though, is that there is a defensible notion of competitiveness
on a national level, and that cost-changing measures (subsidizing exports,
assassinating union leaders) are not simply offset by exchange rates; they have
impacts on aggregate flows.

Peter

Max Sawicky wrote:

  In a world in which transaction demand on the current account was the sole
  basis for forex markets, with constant PPP and never a whiff of pricing to
  market, then this type of analysis would make sense.  We're not
  in that world, however. Peter
 

 AND . . . . ???

 mbs

Re: Historical Materialism



- Original Message -
From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]


^^^

Haven't you shifted to a different issue ? You started saying that
under  Quine-Duhem underdetermination problem, the burden was on
the proponents of the Marxist theory to demonstrate the
indispensiblity of their theory. But doesn't Quine-Duham
underdetermination deal with a situation in which both theories are
valid and the evidence doesn't help in choosing between them ? If
you are saying that Marx's value theory doesn't correspond to
evidence or can't be tested, that is not a Quine-Duhem
underdetermination problem , is it ?



Charles

===

Q-D underdetermination asserts that if two theories are equivalent
in their empirical entailments then some other criteria needs to be
used to compare explanatory virtues etc. If the main results of the
LTV and or the LoV whether in a quantitative-qualitative
combination or relying singly on quantitative or qualitative
approaches adds nothing to what can be achieved in terms of
*explanation* without them, then why shouldn't Ockam's razor
apply--to concepts, not entities? Especially if some want to say
that the Value concept--polysemy alert-- has no empirical
entailments?

So does the Value concept have empirical entailments or not and
what's the decision procedure for the determination? If we say it
doesn't, then what explanatory work does it do? If we say it does
then it seems to become even more problematic with regards to the
multitude of LTV's in the quantitative version because they haven't
even been shown to be equivalent in their empirical entailments;
that should alert us to something being amiss with the network of
assertions which not only facilitate the construction of the
algorithms for determining the entailments, but the manner in which
the concepts are defined. This assumes, of course, the plausibility
of the analytic-synthetic distinction, an issue also still under
dispute. If we take the qualitative route, then we have to
determine whether or not the Value concept, both in the LTV mode
and the LoV mode passes muster with --take your pick-- any of the
causal theories of reference on offer. If we say that any of the
causal theories of reference on offer don't pass muster in order to
determine the validity of the Value concept, how do we avoid the
idea of having achieved something akin to a Pyhrric victory given
that dueling skepticisms don't facilitate the development of
theories?

Ian

Re: what's going to happen?

2002-02-05 Thread Doug Henwood


Devine, James wrote:

For anyone interested, I just gave a talk on what's going to happen to the
U.S. economy to the Loyola Marymount University student economics society.
My notes can be found at:
http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/faculty/jdevine/talks/ESTalk020502.htm

A lot of folks at the WEF were saying it's going to be a W, or a U 
with an extremely saggy right tail. Krugman gave a synopsis of one of 
the brainstorming sessions that sounded rather downbeat I'm told.

The thing about debt, though, is you never know what the killing 
level is. In the U.S., it's just kept rising, except for unpleasant 
but not disastrous periods like the early 1990s. You could recycle 
debt worries from 1975 or 1981 or 1989 almost word for word. Debt's a 
good explanation after something cracks, but you never know the 
timing. You never know when lenders will change their minds or why.

Doug

Re: [Arg_Solid] Re: Argentina and money


Adam: So who should take the money from the middle class?  Who should tell the workers 
that they should make no money now that they are starving?

In your ultraleftist rants you defend the bourgeoisie for making Argentina a cashless 
society--only because all the cash is now in foreign banks.  We want a cashless 
society, but only when the means 
of production are socialized and a means to satisfy human need exist.  

Karl: I object to the way in which you subject me to attack by describing what I say 
as ultraleftist rants. This kind of sectarian bigotry fluently pours from you like 
bile out of a running sore. You don't even make a feeble attempt to justify the use of 
such venom. I could just as easily call you a superficial reactionary cretin. However 
unlike you I don't descend to this kind of vituperation. I have more respect for 
myself.

Now in response to your criticism.

The point is that the workers under Argentinian conditions  cannot, to use your 
language, make money. This, in a sense, is the problem. Capitalism lacks sufficient 
variable capital (money wages) to advance in the form of money. Consequently the needs 
of the working class are left unsatisfied by Argentinian capitalism. Clearly the 
problem is not more money but the incapacity of capitalism to meet the need of the 
working class --even apparently at the most basic of levels. These conditions are 
verification of the historical obsolescence of capitalism and the necessity of a 
social form that can meet those needs --communist society. Consequently it is absurd 
for the working class to  seek more money when there is no money available. This means 
that misconceive social being. Capitalism is incapable of producing the money wages 
that form the basis for the satisfaction of workers' needs. It is absurd for the 
working class to  clamour for the re-establishment of money at a time when!
 history is destroying that very social form as manifested in the growing 
worthlessness of the peso. Reformists like you, who engage in cheap name calling, want 
to re-establish money when history is taking the working class in the opposite 
direction. In short reformists, such as yourself, seek to defend money against the 
very tide of history --objective movement. Clearly figures such as you play a decisive 
and indispensable role in the defence of the capitalist system. Who is then is the one 
out of step --you or me?


Regards
Karl Carlile (Global Communist Group)
Be free to join our communism mailing list 
at http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/

Re: what's going to happen?


Doug writes:A lot of folks at the WEF were saying it's going to be a W, or
a U with an extremely saggy right tail. Krugman gave a synopsis of one of
the brainstorming sessions that sounded rather downbeat I'm told. 

you weren't invited to the WEF? It's interesting that they're pessimistic.
Time to sell! (as if I had anything to sell...) 
The thing about debt, though, is you never know what the killing level is.
In the U.S., it's just kept rising, except for unpleasant but not disastrous
periods like the early 1990s. You could recycle debt worries from 1975 or
1981 or 1989 almost word for word. Debt's a good explanation after something
cracks, but you never know the timing. You never know when lenders will
change their minds or why. 
Obviously, the killing level for debt depends on the value of assets. With
falling or stagnant asset prices, the debt is more likely to kill both
consumers and corporations. 
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: Re: what's going to happen?

2002-02-05 Thread Doug Henwood


Devine, James wrote:

It's interesting that they're pessimistic.
Time to sell!

See below (from the anonymous Observer diary on the op-ed page of the FT).

you weren't invited to the WEF?

I actually covered it for The Nation. Which means I got to hang out 
in the press hotel, read press releases, watch closed-circuit TV, and 
listen to the occasional press conference. I did get to see Bono  
[EMAIL PROTECTED], though.

I better go write the piece now instead of telling PEN-L all about it.

Doug

PS: Surprise - Danny Media Dissector Schechter, proprietor of 
mediachannel.org and half the management team of Globalvision, was 
invited to the WEF.



Financial Times; Feb 4, 2002

Why is the WEF so special? Maybe because it is almost always entirely 
wrong. In 1990, the theme was dealing with Japan's economic might. In 
1994, everyone was talking about the coming triumph of Asian values.

By 1999, the talk was of the future of the euro as a strong world 
currency. In 2000, it was the transforming effects of information 
technology and the internet on the world economy. Last year, everyone 
was sure the world would escape recession.

This year's theme is fragile times, which can only mean we are in 
for a remarkable period of global peace and prosperity.

FW: lyin sack of shit finally drops dead

2002-02-05 Thread Forstater, Mathew




and pete seeger lives on


Harvey Matusow, 75, an Anti-Communist Informer, Dies
By DOUGLAS MARTIN 
 
Harvey Matusow, a paid informer who named more than
200 people as Communists or Communist sympathizers in
the early 1950's, only to recant and say he lied in
almost every instance, died on Jan. 17 at his home in
Claremont, N.H. He was 75.

Nancy Graton, a friend, said the cause was
complications of injuries suffered in an automobile
crash on Jan. 2.

Mr. Matusow, who served 44 months of a five-year
sentence for perjury in a federal penitentiary,
created a sensation in 1955 when he revealed his many
lies in his book False Witness (Cameron  Kahn).
Some hailed it for exposing what they regarded as
questionable tactics by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and
other zealous anti-Communists.

At long last, the shining truth about the false
accusers, the half- truth artists, the professional
fabricators, the prevaricators for pay is beginning to
break up through the dark and ugly clouds of doubt
they have so evilly blown up, said Senator Margaret
Chase Smith of Maine, a McCarthy target.

But others remained convinced that Mr. Matusow had
been telling the truth before his recantation.
Attorney General Herbert Brownell called his reversal
part of a concerted drive to discredit government
witnesses.

Mr. Matusow began in 1950 by giving the Federal Bureau
of Investigation information he had obtained through
his membership in the Communist Party. He became an
aide to Senator McCarthy, chairman of the Senate
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

He also testified before the House Committee on
Un-American Activities, the Senate Internal Security
Subcommittee, the Subversive Activities Control Board,
the Ohio Un- American Affairs Commission and the
Industrial Commission of Texas, among other bodies. In
addition, he was a witness in court cases against
those accused of being Communists.

Among those he accused of Communist sympathies were
the State Department, CBS, the Boy Scouts, the Girl
Scouts, the Young Women's Christian Association, the
United Nations, the Nazis, the Martians, the Undead,
the Uncircumcized, Jesus H. Christ, Roy Cohn and
Senator Joe McCarthy. He said there were 500 Communist
teachers in the New York City school system, for which
he was a paid consultant. His testimony resulted in
the folk singer Pete Seeger's being cited for contempt
of Congress.

Mr. Matusow's often wildly exaggerated approach was
suggested by his assertion that The New York Times had
126 Communists on the staff that produced its Sunday
sections; at a time that staff had 100 people. He
later signed an affidavit disavowing his accusation
against The Times.

In The Great Fear (Simon  Schuster, 1978), David
Cante argued that the greatest failing of Mr. Matusow
and other paid witnesses was what might kindly be
called imprecision.

On a nod from prosecutors, they sold hunches or
guesses as inside knowledge, supporting their claims
with bogus reports of conversations and encounters,
Mr. Cante wrote.

Harvey Marshall Matusow was born on Oct. 3, 1926, in
the Bronx. His father owned a cigar store. He dropped
out of high school to join the Army. He found what he
believed to be the grave of his brother, his only
sibling, in Germany, an event he said deeply
traumatized him.

After the war, hungry for the camaraderie of the Army,
he joined American Youth for Democracy, a leftist
organization, in 1946. He described his participation
as feverish. He said he felt closest to the
Communists in the group and joined the Communist Party
in 1947.

But he soon came to dislike what he called the
absolutist attitudes of party leaders. In 1950, he
picked up the phone to call the F.B.I. When someone
answered, he felt a cold chill and hung up, he wrote.

I must have looked like a character in a Hollywood
melodrama as I lit a cigarette, put it out, lit
another one, paced the floor, then got back to the
phone, he wrote. Like a man who commits suicide,
once you leap from that building, it's too late to
turn back. That's the way I felt about contacting the
F.B.I.

He was assigned to attend party meetings as an
informer for $70 a month. He was soon exposed and
expelled. He joined the Air Force and wrote an angry
letter to the House Committee on Un-American
Activities denouncing his own presence, as a former
Communist, in the armed forces.

He started testifying before the committee as an
ex-Communist expert. After he left the Air Force, his
career as an expert anti-Communist began in earnest.
Among other things, he worked for Counterattack, a
newsletter that blacklisted Communists, wrote an
article for the American Legion Magazine titled Reds
in Khaki and tried to smear political candidates who
opposed Senator McCarthy in the elections of 1952.

Mr. Matusow married one of the principal contributors
to Senator McCarthy's anti-Communist crusade, Arvilla
Peterson Bentley.

She was one of around a dozen wives. He is survived by
the former Irene Gibson, whom he married

My favorite economist

2002-02-05 Thread Sabri Oncu


Rate of Return

02/01 17:27
Morgan Stanley's Roach Says Recession to Last: Rates of Return
By Heather Bandur

New York, Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Rising consumer confidence,
falling unemployment and a pickup in manufacturing have many Wall
Street economists saying the U.S. economy is on the verge of
pulling out of recession.

Not Stephen Roach.

The chief economist at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter  Co. says a
recovery is almost a year away because companies aren't investing
and consumer spending is ripe for a decline. This, he says, will
prompt the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates at least once
more after 11 reductions last year.

``It is ludicrous to think that we have built a solid base for
economic recovery,'' Roach said. ``Capital spending is at the
bottom, exports are dead in the water, and the American consumer
is tapped out. Who is going to lead us into a recovery? There
isn't a great candidate.''

Roach forecasts the economy will shrink in the second and third
quarters, following a return to growth this quarter. He calls it
a ``double-dip'' -- contraction followed by signs of growth and
then more contraction. He says the rebound in the economy may
begin in October.

His pessimism on the economy makes Morgan Stanley one of only two
firms of the 24 that trade with the Fed, known as primary
dealers, to forecast the central bank will cut rates this year.
Roach says the Fed may lower the rate as much as a
half-percentage point to 1.25 percent by year-end to bolster
demand.

Bonds to Gain?

If the 56-year-old economist is right, bonds may rise.

They have fallen since Jan. 11, driving the yield on the most
widely traded two-year note up 35 basis points to 3.08 percent,
as investors have anticipated the Fed will start reversing last
year's rate reductions. Twenty of the 24 primary dealer
economists predict Fed rate increases this year, with some saying
the first rise will come in the second quarter.

The Fed left the benchmark overnight rate unchanged at a 40- year
low of 1.75 percent Wednesday, the first time central bankers
didn't lower the rate at a meeting since December 2000.

Roach says retailers' price discounts will fuel a rise in
consumer spending this quarter, sparking growth of as much as 3
percent. That consumption boom will turn into a bust by the
second quarter because the unemployment rate remains high at 5.6
percent. He says the economy will shrink as much as 2 percent in
the second and third quarters.

``Never before have consumers spent with such a vengeance in the
depths of recession,'' Roach said in a research report. ``With
jobs and income under pressure, paybacks are the norm in the
aftermath of mid-recession consumption spurts.''

Minority Opinion

Roach says this ``double-dip'' has happened in five of the last
six recessions dating back to the 1950s, with the economy
contracting for several more months just when it seemed it was
poised to recover.

Roach's colleagues on Wall Street disagree, saying the rise in
factory output indexes and consumer confidence and decline in the
jobless rate in January show a recovery is underway. The economy
will expand at a 2.3 percent annual pace in the second quarter
and a 3.4 percent rate in the third, according to 41 economists
surveyed by Bloomberg News, including William Dudley of Goldman
Sachs  Co. and Bruce Steinberg at Merrill Lynch  Co.

``I am not here to raise eyebrows; I am here to get it right,''
Roach said.

He got it wrong when he made another call that left him in the
minority in 1997. He predicted the Fed would have to raise the
overnight rate several times that year to 7 percent to head off
faster inflation. The Fed raised its rate target just once -- a
quarter-point rise to 5.5 percent -- and held it at that rate for
18 months as the inflation rate fell.

``When you find yourself isolated, you must think carefully about
what it is you are saying,'' Roach said.

Re: value vs. price


I wrote: the use of value concepts allows the understanding of the
capitalist system as a totality. Lacking this understanding -- and more
importantly, the ability to act on this understanding -- is one aspect
of the anarchy of production, a necessary component of the existence
of crises.

Ok but surely we can understand Capital systemically without value conepts?
I was introduced to systems theory before I read KM and it was easy to see
the consonances but value theory didn't do a friggin' thing for me.
Apparently I'm not alone, so maybe it's just a matter of taste?

you can't understand what Marx is talking about in CAPITAL if you don't
understand his jargon and more importantly, his way of approaching the
question, which is summarized by his phrase the law of value. This lack of
understanding has led to all sorts of misinterpretations -- with the
standard one being that Marx was interested in price theory and followed
Ricardo -- and, more interestingly, caused superficial critiques. I don't
think it's a matter of taste: the standard framework of mainstream academia
is individualistic, where as value theory is inherently oriented toward
seeing society as exactly that, a society.

As Cornel West's analysis of Marx's take on morality suggests, Marx
applied the standards of bourgeois right (trading at price =
value) to show that capitalist violates _its own standards_. Marx clearly
had his own moral standards, but he never elaborated on them (he was never
an ethicist): living in an era (not that different from our own) when
people throw around moral slogans and then routinely turn around to violate
them, he focused instead on the contrast between moral theory
and practice. West argues that Marx gave up on the project of finding
the fundamental basis for all morality. [partly because he saw efforts such
as Kant's as so sterile.]

Well I don't identify the normative with morality although they share many
family resemblances. I can understand and sympathize with KM's skepticism
regarding foundationalism in moral discourse, but there's a bit of Kant in
KM I think we should appreciate rather than dismiss.

there's also a critique of Kant. If I remember, it's that Kant's theory is
so abstract that it's useless, though I'm sure someone knows that stuff
better than I.

To the extent that KM pointed out that Capital, under liberalism, violates
it's own standards, is a great place to connect and make alliances with
non-Marxist critiques of liberalism. It's part and parcel of why I like
Cohen's stuff; he's made a serious effort on that score as a critique of
Capitalism must facilitate a critique of Liberalism especially the legal
'foundations' of Capitalism. It's part and parcel of asking what, if any,
would be the legal foundations for Socialism or any other non-Capitalist
political economy.

which Cohen? G.A.? I see nothing wrong with alliances with non-Marxist
critiques of liberalism, but I think it's good not to mush them together so
that we can preserve some conceptual clarity. Also, I bet that the
non-Marxist critiques are based partly on Marx.

The Law of Value is not specifically a normative theory. The way I
explain exploitation's ethical edge is by the phrase taxation
without representation. Capitalist exploitation rests on state use of
force, on domination of workers' lives in the workplace and elsewhere, and
on the structural coercion inherent in the reserve army of the unemployed.
The role of coercion makes exploitation like taxation. Now, in theory, this
exploitation could be the basis for building up civilization and the like.
But workers have no say -- no representation --in any of this.

Well I simply told co-workers that firms are oligarchies and are
fundamentally un-democratic and there's a reason for that and that was an
opening into all sorts of interesting discussion about labor costs, class
etc. You'd be amazed at contemporary workers responses to the simple
question of 'where do profits come from'?

good, but it's important to remember that capitalist society as a whole is
also undemocratic and hierarchical. 

Value theory starts with the notion that we all live in a society which
works as a group (though often poorly coordinated). That basic notion of
interdependency is missing in MI.

Right, which is why I don't adhere to MI, but I came at the problem from
philosophy of science and some of the same issues as Justin--he did physics,
I looked at ecology and the ontological status of species--before I really
engaged KM. 

According to Paul Burkett, Marx was very ecological in his thinking. 

...

Jim Devine

Re: Re: value vs. price



- Original Message -
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED]


you can't understand what Marx is talking about in CAPITAL if you
don't
understand his jargon and more importantly, his way of approaching
the
question, which is summarized by his phrase the law of value.
This lack of
understanding has led to all sorts of misinterpretations -- with
the
standard one being that Marx was interested in price theory and
followed
Ricardo -- and, more interestingly, caused superficial critiques. I
don't
think it's a matter of taste: the standard framework of mainstream
academia
is individualistic, where as value theory is inherently oriented
toward
seeing society as exactly that, a society.


=

Never said I didn't understand the jargon. Surely there are other
ways of examining society, no? Is there one true theory of society
under capitalism and doesn't this put the problem of
representationalism before us? I'd be the last person to want to
pigeonhole KM as a price theorist and I definitely see exploitation
in terms of asymmetric power/knowledge formations not only within
firms but diffused through the society. I'm certainly not surprised
that academics have an individualistic gestalt/bias. I argued
plenty with my profs with regards to the limitations of all that
c--p.





there's also a critique of Kant. If I remember, it's that Kant's
theory is
so abstract that it's useless, though I'm sure someone knows that
stuff
better than I.

==

Well skepticism can undo just about any ethical project; it's a
short step from negative liberty to liberty as negation of anything
we don't like.




which Cohen? G.A.? I see nothing wrong with alliances with
non-Marxist
critiques of liberalism, but I think it's good not to mush them
together so
that we can preserve some conceptual clarity. Also, I bet that the
non-Marxist critiques are based partly on Marx.
=

Well that's great of course; I'm all for healthy syncretism and
pluralism. Anyone on the list for obscurantism?




good, but it's important to remember that capitalist society as a
whole is
also undemocratic and hierarchical.

==

Ya think? :-)


Value theory starts with the notion that we all live in a society
which
works as a group (though often poorly coordinated). That basic
notion of
interdependency is missing in MI.

Right, which is why I don't adhere to MI, but I came at the
problem from
philosophy of science and some of the same issues as Justin--he did
physics,
I looked at ecology and the ontological status of species--before I
really
engaged KM.

According to Paul Burkett, Marx was very ecological in his
thinking.



I'll be checking out PB's book when it's cheap or UW library copy
is available. I loved the book he did titled Distributional
Conflict And Inflation : Theoretical And Historical Perspectives.
The first chapter was a prime example of lucidity.


Ian

Value talk