[PEN-L:4228] Re: Mexico
I would second Barkley's note re. Sid Shniad postings. So long as they don't come too thick and fast, Sid is doing us a valuable service. == Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
[PEN-L:4153] Re: story
On Tue, 14 Feb 1995, Doug Henwood wrote: When did economists start (over)using the word "story"? Anyone know the pedigree of turn of phrase? I can't give a history, but I take Doug's point. Seems to me the term 'story' is very much part of the 'model'/'story' pair. That is, neoclassical econ having become excessively enamoured of mathematical models -- to the point where their manipulation becomes the sole truly legitimate occupation of the professional economist -- any attempt to motivate such models by reference to certain features of the real, or to interpret the results obtained in terms of real processes, is set off as 'story'-telling. ====== Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
[PEN-L:3995] Veblen and the neoclassical agent
There is a well known passage in which Thorstein Veblen ridicules the neoclassical conception of the economic agent. So far as I remember he uses phrases like "a quivering globule of desire" and "lightning calculator of pleasures and pains". Can anyone help me out with the precise citation for these remarks? Thanks. === Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University Winston-Salem, NC, USA (910) 759-5762 ===
Re: The Hayek critique
It seems that everyone these days accepts the Hayek critique of planning. Are there any sharp new critiques of the critiques that the comrades could recommend? As for sharpness, the reader will have to judge, but Paul Cockshott and I have a piece that takes on the critique, primarily with reference to Mises but also with some discussion of Hayek and Don Lavoie. It's in the Review of Political Economy, vol. 5 (1993), pp. 73-112, and it's titled 'Calculation, Complexity and Planning: The Socialist Calculation Debate Once Again.' Basically, it is an unabashed defense of a variant of economy-wide planning. Paul and I also have a working paper that deals specifically with Hayek's 1945 article, 'The Use of Knowledge in Society', which we hope to publish somewhere before long. === Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University Winston-Salem, NC 27109 (910) 759-5762 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ===
Re:discussion of coupon socialism
Too busy to respond personally to the recent discussion of coupon socialism versus a more full-blooded version; but the thoughts of Paul Cockshott and myself on these matters can be found in a new article, "Value, Markets and Socialism." It's available in postscript from the archive at colorado (ftp to csf.colorado.edu, then go to the sub-dir /econ/authors/Cottrell.Allin. The file is vms.ps.) ======= Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University Winston-Salem, NC 27109 (910) 759-5762 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ===
Re: Broken vows Coase
Doug he asked: Do PEN-Lers have, or know of, any critiques of Coase's theorem of why firms exist? Relatedly, are there any Marxian theories of the firm? One relevant item that comes to mind is an interesting piece by Axel Leijonhufvud, which commends both Smith and Marx for having a lot more to say about the existence of firms than do modern neoclassicals. I can't remember the title offhand, but it's in a volume edited by Langlois, entitled "Economics as a Process." ======= Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University Winston-Salem, NC 27109 (910) 759-5762 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ===
new socialism book
In debate in pen-l a few months back I made reference to a recently- published book, "Towards a New Socialism," by Paul Cockshott and myself (Nottingham, England: Spokesman). In case anyone is interested, it is now available in the US, from Coronet Books, 311 Bainbridge Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147. Ph. (215) 925-2762; fax (215) 925-1912. (Since Paul and I are getting no royalties, advertising in this medium does not seem out of order.) You can see a description of the contents in the September 1994 issue of the JEL. ======= Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University Winston-Salem, NC 27109 (910) 759-5762 ===
Re: gopher pen-l
could someone give me the gopher path if one wants to consult the pen-l archives? or the pkt archives? thanks ahead of time. csf.colorado.edu: Heterodox Economics/Archives: Pkt === Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University Winston-Salem, NC 27109 (910) 759-5762 ===
Re: rate of profit
On Sat, 23 Apr 1994 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote inquiring 1. where to find reliable and current information on the [average] rate of profit in the US and elsewhere 2. what trends in the [average] rate of profit in the US have looked like in the 1945-1972 and 1972-1994 periods 3. how meaningful a statistic the rate of profit is. I have a similar question regarding the rate of exploitation. Does anyone calculate that these days? On the US economy, I recommend Fred Moseley, The Falling Rate of Profit in the Postwar US Economy (London: Macmillan, 1991). On Britain, try Paul Dunne (ed.), Quantitative Marxism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991). Paul Cockshott, Greg Michaelson and I have a paper, "Testing Marx: Some New Results from UK Data" which may be forthcoming in Capital and Class. I plan to post a copy to my directory at the pkt archive at csf.colorado. edu, from where it will be available by ftp. All of these sources have measures of both the rate of profit and the rate of exploitation. Figures on the total $ amount of corporate profits are readily avilable, on a quarterly basis (for instance, among the BCI - Business Cycle Indicator - files which are available in electronic form from the University of Michigan library. Rate of profit figures are harder to come by. The rate of profit is, of course, the amount of profit divided by the stock of capital. To be fair to the official statisticians, it should be pointed out that the theoretical problems in measuring the capital stock are more severe than those involved in measuring the flow of profit income. ====== Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
Re: GE Appearances -- III (very long!
A small point in response to one aspect of Jim D's latest posting. There is no contradiction in Marx's saying that the price of commodities other than labor-power gravitate towards their "prices of production" while the price of labor-power gravitates towards its value (though there may be other problems with this formulation). The point is that labor-power, since it is not produced under capitalistic conditions, via a process that participates in the formation of a general rate of profit, *doesn't have* a "price of production" in Marx's sense. ====== Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV: responses to critics
stewardship properly override the labor-time calculus. 9. More generally, consider the moves towards environmental protection in advanced capitalist economies. Are these an *effect* of the working of the price system? Of course not. The banning of CFCs, the mandating of lead-free gasoline, the limitation of sulfur dioxide emissions, and so on, are accomplished by governmental regulation, in response to pressures from the general population or the environmentalist lobby or the scientific community. In a democratic socialist economy, the same pressures would operate. Just as the imperatives of profit-maximization are (sometimes) overriden by environmental/conservationist concerns under capitalism, so may the application of a labor-time calculus, in a planned system, be constrained by the same concerns. Paul and I have argued in our book that it is a mystification to suppose that environmental issues, involving non-reproducible resources, can be "factored into" a scalar representation of cost: they must, if people regard them as important, be imposed as external constraints on narrowly "economic" calculation. == Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
Re: Allin C and LAWS OF CHAOS
I think (of course!) that Ajit Sinha has grossly misrepresented Farjoun and Mchover. Two brief observations: (1) They think that an adequate theory of price is important, but it is certainly not the "sole purpose" of their argument. Their theory of price is harnessed to the usual concerns of Marxian economics (generating and explaining the "laws of motion" etc.). (2) Their argument against the equalized rate of profit assumption is not that it is an abstraction, but that it is a *bad* abstraction. Their own stochastic approach is also highly abstract, but the claim is that it does not abstract from an *essential* feature of the process of capitalist competition. The F and M argument has its weak points, and is certainly not beyond criticism; but I find Ajit's dismissal patronizing and complacent. ====== Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
Re: Allin C and LAWS OF CHAOS
I think (of course!) that Ajit Sinha has grossly misrepresented Farjoun and Mchover. Two brief observations: (1) They think that an adequate theory of price is important, but it is certainly not the "sole purpose" of their argument. Their theory of price is harnessed to the usual concerns of Marxian economics (generating and explaining the "laws of motion" etc.). (2) Their argument against the equalized rate of profit assumption is not that it is an abstraction, but that it is a *bad* abstraction. Their own stochastic approach is also highly abstract, but the claim is that it does not abstract from an *essential* feature of the process of capitalist competition. The F and M argument has its weak points, and is certainly not beyond criticism; but I find Ajit's dismissal patronizing and complacent. ====== Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV: Responses to critics
I shall first attempt to answer Steve Keen's questions. 1. Steve asks whether I would accept that what I have defended is really a Labor Measure of Value (LMV) rather than a Labor Theory of Value (LTV). No, I wouldn't. An LMV, as I understand it, is what you find in Smith's advocacy of labor *commanded* as the proper measure of price, and in Keynes's use of the wage- unit in The General Theory. The LMV in itself says nothing whatever about how prices are *determined*, only about how they are most usefully expressed. Smith, famously, argued that that the labor-content theory of value (LTV) didn't apply outside of the "early and rude state of society": for capitalism, he advanced the theory that "natural price" is determined by summing the natural recompense of the three factors of production (natural wage, natural profit and natural rent) -- a doctrine that both Ricardo and Marx vehemently opposed. But even when he thus ditched the LTV, Smith continued to advocate labor commanded as te best *measure* of the three components of natural price. Ricardo and Marx upheld the much more substantive proposition that relative prices are *determined* by socially necessary labor-content (or more confidently, that changes in relative prices are determined by changes in labor-content). I have defended a version of this thesis. Steve talks about using labor as a numeraire; but the choice of a numeraire is basically just a matter of theoretical convenience, and my claims on behalf of labor go far beyond that. Barkley Rosser, though he is a bit skeptical, has caught my meaning more clearly. 2. Steve asks if I believe that "labor is the only source of (new) value, and therefore that machinery etc. do not add new value". I am inclined to refuse the terms of this catechism. Talk of labor "creating value" and machines "passing it on" is useful heuristically and valid up to a point, but I wouldn't want to push it too far, since it suggests a conception of "value" as a sort of metaphysical substance exuded by human beings but not machines. Let me re-phrase and answer his question in two different ways. (1) Do I believe that in a rational calculus of social cost, machines should be accounted as so much embodied labor time? Basically, Yes. (2) Do I believe that the (real) profit income of capitalists (and the real interest-income of rentiers, and the real rental income of landlords) is properly conceived as the proceeds of the exploitation of (extraction of surplus labor from) productive labor? Yes, I do. The arguments in the last several "LTV Defense" postings were supposed to bear on these points. == Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV defense, part 12 (and final)
rvation of other *species* is arguably a different matter -- a moral imperative.) 7. Further, consider the issue of full employment. Clearly, this is a priority under socialism. The minimization of the labor time required to produce things is also a priority. As a first approximation, the idea might be: "Use all the labor-power there is, but spread the resulting labor as thinly as possible over the things you are producing, so as to be able to produce as many things as possible." 8. Of course when we say we want full employment, that we want to use all the available labor power, this doesn't mean that we want to have everyone working as many hours as they possibly can. We want to have everyone working as many hours as they would like to. Let me cut through the intricacies of this point with the assumption that we have broad social agreement on a standard x-hour working day. Then full employment means that all fit and able labor-powers should be employed for x hours a day (naturally, with some flexibility for part-time work around the edges). 9. This requirement creates another special feature of labor. Not only is labor *scarce* (leading to the need to economize it in any particular branch of production), but it should be *fully used* each period. This feature does not carry over to other resources. A non-reproducible natural resource such as oil may be scarce (in the sense that its ultimate supply is finite), yet there is no requirement that it be "fully used" each period. Indeed, what would that mean in the case of oil? All we can say here is that there is no point in extracting more oil each period than one wants to use during the period (unless one has a specific reason for adding to stocks). In that sense the current flow output of oil should be "fully used". But of course this current flow output is endogenous: one produces just as much oil as one plans to use, and the planned usage in turn is determined by technology (in the form, let us say, of the oil-input to labor-input ratio in production), in conjunction with the amount of labor one plans to perform. 10. Thus, while it would in principle be possible to construct an oil theory of value in place of the LTV, there are several reasons why the LTV is of special significance to human societies. One can imagine circumstances in which the calculation of embodied oil-values might be desirable in a planning context (scarcity of oil is the most pressing constraint on the economy, and there is no possibility of substituting some alternative, producible via the application of labor), but these do not in fact obtain. Labor-content is clearly the best single, scalar measure of the cost to society of producing each sort of good. To the extent that relative prices under capitalism reflect, albeit in a highly imperfect and distorted fashion, social cost of production, one would expect to see the LTV borne out empirically -- as indeed one does. 11. Well, that is enough from me. I don't want to try people's patience too far; and besides, I need to get on with other things that I've been neglecting. I hope that I have laid down sufficient of a trail so that those who think it might be headed in the right (or at least an interesting) direction, can extrapolate for themselves. For anyone interested, some of the points made above, concerning the role of labor-values in a rational cost calculus for a planned system, are developed more fully in a paper with Paul Cockshott in Review of Political Economy, vol. 5, no. 1, 1993; an earlier paper, expanding on different aspects of the issue, may be found in Economy and Society, vol. 18, no. 1, 1989. Thanks to everyone who offered encouragement along the way, and I hope these postings have been of some use-value. == Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
Re: It's not Marx
Not wanting to get myself any deeper into hot water, I'll respond to just one of Jim Devine's points. I don't really get the idea that (quote) price/value deviations befuddle our consciousness and obscure the class nature of the capitalist system to its participants. (unquote) Elsewhere Jim makes the same point the other way round, i.e. if only prices and values were strictly proportional, capitalist exploitation would be "visible" to all. Where is this idea coming from? I would have said that although feudal exploitation may be "visible" (e.g. the corvee), cap. exploitation is "concealed" by "fair exchange" -- and, in a sense, the fairer the exchange the *better* the disguise. Marx's task was to show -- contrary to a widespread view -- that *even* if commodities exchanged in proportion to their labor-content, there would still be exploitation. Thus I feel that Jim has this point backwards. == Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
Re: It's not Marx
Not wanting to get myself any deeper into hot water, I'll respond to just one of Jim Devine's points. I don't really get the idea that (quote) price/value deviations befuddle our consciousness and obscure the class nature of the capitalist system to its participants. (unquote) Elsewhere Jim makes the same point the other way round, i.e. if only prices and values were strictly proportional, capitalist exploitation would be "visible" to all. Where is this idea coming from? I would have said that although feudal exploitation may be "visible" (e.g. the corvee), cap. exploitation is "concealed" by "fair exchange" -- and, in a sense, the fairer the exchange the *better* the disguise. Marx's task was to show -- contrary to a widespread view -- that *even* if commodities exchanged in proportion to their labor-content, there would still be exploitation. Thus I feel that Jim has this point backwards. == Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV defense, part 11
X-content theory of value (as opposed to a non X-content theory, such as the Sraffian or GE systems). Since exchange ratios, the explananda of such a theory, are scalars, X- content must itself be a scalar. In other words, X must be homogeneous -- or at least it must be possible to treat X as homogeneous for theoretical purposes, without departing too radically from reality. This requirement clearly rules out "land" (i.e. one can't even begin to think of the land-content of a commodity as a scalar quantity), though it would seem not to rule out oil. (And neither, of course, does it rule out labor. Yes, human labor-time is not truly homogeneous. But nonetheless human labor-power is an all-purpose resource, in the sense that anyone of average intelligence and dexterity can be trained to perform almost any of the tasks required in the economy.) 10. Conclusions so far: An XTV is in principle possible for any X that (a) is 'basic' in the technical sense, (b) is only weakly producible and (c) may be conceived as homogeneous as a tolerable first approximation. Coming up: Some final suggestions on why the LTV is properly privileged over any other XTV. == Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV defense, part 10
ess peasants against a landlord class -- for the redistribution of land -- but it is not applicable to the struggle of wage-workers against a capitalist class. Next time I'll begin on my final topic, a fuller defense of the 'specialness' of labor as it relates to the LTV. ====== Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV defense, part 10
ess peasants against a landlord class -- for the redistribution of land -- but it is not applicable to the struggle of wage-workers against a capitalist class. Next time I'll begin on my final topic, a fuller defense of the 'specialness' of labor as it relates to the LTV. ====== Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV defense, digression
LTV defense: interim responses == 1. There are still a few more instalments of my "LTV defense" to come, before the whole structure -- or at least a sketch of it -- is "on the table" for criticism. Nonetheless, it would be churlish to plough (plow) ahead without regard to comments received, so in this note I break off to indicate briefly the sort of answers I would have to the points raised by Mike Lebowitz and Steve Keen. 2. Both Mike and Steve are concerned, though in different ways, that I am not making enough of a distinction between Marx's theory of value (MTV) as such and the LTV, considered as a theory that was (very broadly) shared by Smith, Ricardo and Marx. Mike's focus is on abstract versus concrete labor; Steve's is on Marx's conception of use-value. A few words on these points in turn. 3. Yes, the distinction between abstract and concrete labor is essential to MTV; but it is strongly implicit in any LTV. Ricardo proposes that "commodities derive their exchangeable value from . . . the quantity of labour required to obtain them." To render this meaningful, we must be able, in principle if not in practice, to quantify the labor required to obtain any given commodity. But one can't add up hours of baking labor, spinning labor, mining labor, etc. (i.e. specific concrete labors), unless one conceives of these as just various instances of human labor in general (i.e. abstract labor). Marx was clearer and more explicit on this, to be sure, but I don't see the concrete labor/abstract labor distinction as something that Ricardo would have objected to; rather, he seems to have taken it for granted. 4. I think it is a serious mistake, however, to go on to say (as Mike does) that abstract, socially-necessary labor-time is something that is manifest or measurable *only in the market prices of commodities*. This is to render the LTV empirically vacuous. If the LTV (or MTV) is to have any empirical content, one must suppose that although one cannot *identify* the actual clocked labor-content of any given commodity with its abstract, socially-necessary labor-content, nonetheless market competition ensures that these two magnitudes do not diverge to an arbitrary extent. And if one is dealing with large collections of specific commodities (as when using an input-output matrix with around 100 sectors, as Paul Cockshott and I were in our empirical work), it is reasonable to take clocked labor-content as a measure of Marx's "substance of value." 5. Steve Keen seems to reckon that I'm underplaying the importance of use-value in MTV. His main point, made by reference to Marx's notes on Adolf Wagner and to Rosdolsky, relates to the special use- value of *labor-power*, namely its ability to contribute more labor time to the production process than is embodied in its payment. Well, this is obviously of great importance to Marx's theory of exploitation - - which I'm just about to get to in my sequence of postings -- but I don't see it as inconsistent with anything I have said to date. 6. More generally, what distinguishes MTV from LTV? I would say that MTV is LTV set in a particular theoretical and political context; it is LTV developed into a theory of exploitation and a critique of capitalism, something foreign to both Smith and Ricardo. To achieve this development, Marx had to distinguish very clearly between labor the activity and labor-power the commodity: I reckon that is the key conceptual advance over Ricardo. MTV is also in a sense LTV generalized -- a hint of this can be found in the Marx quotation at the end of my last posting (LTV defense, part 8). That is, the exchange of commodities at prices roughly proportional to socially-necessary labor content is conceived by Marx as the specific manifestation, under capitalism, of the "necessity of the distribution of social labour in specific proportions" in order to satisfy the conditions of reproduction of any economic formation. == Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV defense, part 9
(unquote) 8. First response: The 'exploitability' of oil is a consequence of technology (i.e. it is a technological datum that a barrel of oil can be extracted at a total oil-cost of less than one barrel). This is not so for labor: the 'exploitability' of labor depends in part on the consumption bundle, which is socially determined. Here is a real economic difference, which gives a special role to the exploitability of labor in explaining the existence of profits. By raising the price of labor-power sufficiently, workers could, in principle, render themselves 'unexploitable' -- which observation points us towards the socio- economic factors that *prevent* the workers from doing so: these factors explain the possibility of profit. 9. Second, consider the whole list of commodities which capitalists *might* choose to produce. Some of the items on this list may turn out, given current technology, to be inherently 'unexploitable' (e.g. currently it takes a larger energy input to produce a given energy ouput from a nuclear fusion reactor). This is not a problem: capitalists simply don't try to produce them (there are no commercial fusion reactors for electricity generation). From this perspective, the 'exploitability' of all of the commodities actually produced in capitalist economies is not an *explanation* of profits. Rather, the need for profitability explains why only 'exploitable commodities' get produced. Labor's special role -- in this context -- consists in the fact that its use is *not* optional (short of a science-fiction world of complete automation). Labor is not employed because it 'happens to be exploitable', but rather it is the exploitability of (non-optional) labor that explains the possibility of profit. ====== Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV defense, digression
LTV defense: interim responses == 1. There are still a few more instalments of my "LTV defense" to come, before the whole structure -- or at least a sketch of it -- is "on the table" for criticism. Nonetheless, it would be churlish to plough (plow) ahead without regard to comments received, so in this note I break off to indicate briefly the sort of answers I would have to the points raised by Mike Lebowitz and Steve Keen. 2. Both Mike and Steve are concerned, though in different ways, that I am not making enough of a distinction between Marx's theory of value (MTV) as such and the LTV, considered as a theory that was (very broadly) shared by Smith, Ricardo and Marx. Mike's focus is on abstract versus concrete labor; Steve's is on Marx's conception of use-value. A few words on these points in turn. 3. Yes, the distinction between abstract and concrete labor is essential to MTV; but it is strongly implicit in any LTV. Ricardo proposes that "commodities derive their exchangeable value from . . . the quantity of labour required to obtain them." To render this meaningful, we must be able, in principle if not in practice, to quantify the labor required to obtain any given commodity. But one can't add up hours of baking labor, spinning labor, mining labor, etc. (i.e. specific concrete labors), unless one conceives of these as just various instances of human labor in general (i.e. abstract labor). Marx was clearer and more explicit on this, to be sure, but I don't see the concrete labor/abstract labor distinction as something that Ricardo would have objected to; rather, he seems to have taken it for granted. 4. I think it is a serious mistake, however, to go on to say (as Mike does) that abstract, socially-necessary labor-time is something that is manifest or measurable *only in the market prices of commodities*. This is to render the LTV empirically vacuous. If the LTV (or MTV) is to have any empirical content, one must suppose that although one cannot *identify* the actual clocked labor-content of any given commodity with its abstract, socially-necessary labor-content, nonetheless market competition ensures that these two magnitudes do not diverge to an arbitrary extent. And if one is dealing with large collections of specific commodities (as when using an input-output matrix with around 100 sectors, as Paul Cockshott and I were in our empirical work), it is reasonable to take clocked labor-content as a measure of Marx's "substance of value." 5. Steve Keen seems to reckon that I'm underplaying the importance of use-value in MTV. His main point, made by reference to Marx's notes on Adolf Wagner and to Rosdolsky, relates to the special use- value of *labor-power*, namely its ability to contribute more labor time to the production process than is embodied in its payment. Well, this is obviously of great importance to Marx's theory of exploitation - - which I'm just about to get to in my sequence of postings -- but I don't see it as inconsistent with anything I have said to date. 6. More generally, what distinguishes MTV from LTV? I would say that MTV is LTV set in a particular theoretical and political context; it is LTV developed into a theory of exploitation and a critique of capitalism, something foreign to both Smith and Ricardo. To achieve this development, Marx had to distinguish very clearly between labor the activity and labor-power the commodity: I reckon that is the key conceptual advance over Ricardo. MTV is also in a sense LTV generalized -- a hint of this can be found in the Marx quotation at the end of my last posting (LTV defense, part 8). That is, the exchange of commodities at prices roughly proportional to socially-necessary labor content is conceived by Marx as the specific manifestation, under capitalism, of the "necessity of the distribution of social labour in specific proportions" in order to satisfy the conditions of reproduction of any economic formation. == Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV defense, part 9
(unquote) 8. First response: The 'exploitability' of oil is a consequence of technology (i.e. it is a technological datum that a barrel of oil can be extracted at a total oil-cost of less than one barrel). This is not so for labor: the 'exploitability' of labor depends in part on the consumption bundle, which is socially determined. Here is a real economic difference, which gives a special role to the exploitability of labor in explaining the existence of profits. By raising the price of labor-power sufficiently, workers could, in principle, render themselves 'unexploitable' -- which observation points us towards the socio- economic factors that *prevent* the workers from doing so: these factors explain the possibility of profit. 9. Second, consider the whole list of commodities which capitalists *might* choose to produce. Some of the items on this list may turn out, given current technology, to be inherently 'unexploitable' (e.g. currently it takes a larger energy input to produce a given energy ouput from a nuclear fusion reactor). This is not a problem: capitalists simply don't try to produce them (there are no commercial fusion reactors for electricity generation). From this perspective, the 'exploitability' of all of the commodities actually produced in capitalist economies is not an *explanation* of profits. Rather, the need for profitability explains why only 'exploitable commodities' get produced. Labor's special role -- in this context -- consists in the fact that its use is *not* optional (short of a science-fiction world of complete automation). Labor is not employed because it 'happens to be exploitable', but rather it is the exploitability of (non-optional) labor that explains the possibility of profit. ====== Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV defense, part 8
differing and quantitatively determined amounts of society's aggregate labour. It is self-evident that this necessity of the distribution of social labour in specific proportions is certainly not abolished by the specific form of social production; it can only change its form of manifestation. == Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV defense, part 8
differing and quantitatively determined amounts of society's aggregate labour. It is self-evident that this necessity of the distribution of social labour in specific proportions is certainly not abolished by the specific form of social production; it can only change its form of manifestation. == Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
pen and pine
Depending on the software you use for dealing with e-mail, you may or may not have any idea of the problem some of us have been having with mail from PEN-L lately. The point is this. E-mail messages carry a header which contains copious information, much of it redundant from a human point of view. Among the 'fields' in the header are: Received from, Return- path, Originator, Sender, Reply to, and From. Now PEN-L messages identify PEN as the source in several of these fields, but not in "From" or "Reply to". Sensible e-mail software, such as PINE, displays by default only the content of those fields that are likely to be relevant to the user: Date, From, To, Subject, cc., and Reply to (if different from "From"). Since with its current settings, PEN-L has the person who actually wrote the message in both the From and Reply to fields, PINE only displays the former, with no indication that the message is from the list. Solutions for PINE users: (1) If the folks at Chico can change things so that PEN appears in the Reply to field, that would be great. (2) There may be a way of configuring PINE so that it displays the contents of the Sender field. That would identify the source OK, but still means that we wouldn't have the option of using the Reply command to dash off a response to the list, without having to type in the PEN address. ====== Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV defense, part 6
Does the LTV have a mechanism? == 1. I want to get on to Roemer, Elster and exploitation, but first I think I need to address a concern that I suspect may be building in some quarters. I have stressed the empirical validity of the LTV, but I suspect that will not cut much ice in itself. 2. David Hume famously argued that we can never discover any *necessity* in causal connections between matters of fact. Necessity resides solely in the realm of mathematics and logic; among matters of fact there can at best be "constant conjunctions", brute empirical associations. Hume's argument is notoriously difficult to refute, yet surely most scientists feel that there *must* be something wrong with it. We expect of a "good" theory that it does more than produce predictions that happen to come out right most of the time. We expect the theory to specify some underlying *mechanism* responsible for the production of the effect in question. So: Empirical success apart, what is the mechanism of the LTV supposed to be? 3. Of the classical proponents of the LTV -- Smith, Ricardo and Marx -- only Adam Smith (whose version of the LTV was of course considered confused by the latter two) actually specified a mechanism. In Smith, the pressure towards the exchange of commodity bundles containing equal quantitites of labor time resided in the *subjective reckoning* of the parties to the exchange. The beaver-hunter, *seeing* that his "output" took twice as much labor to produce as that of the deer-hunter, refuses to part with the beaver for less than two deer. But unfortunately this mechanism would seem to operate, at best, only in the "early and rude state of society which precedes both the accumulation of stock and the appropriation of land". Capitalists don't calculate the labor-content of their products, or of the commodities they purchase. (Plus, even if they wanted to, it's much more difficult to calculate the labor-content of a commodity produced via a complex division of labor.) 4. Neither Ricardo nor Marx specified an alternative mechanism. Ricardo was perfectly confident that the LTV was right, but if you look for a definite mechanism in the Principles you will be disappointed. What purports to be an argument for the LTV appears on p. 25 of the Sraffa edition, but it is actually no more than an account of what will happen under certain circumstances *on the maintained hypothesis of the LTV*. 5. Marx, though he doesn't give a *mechanism* as such, does offer an argument, in chapter 1 of Capital, I. It goes roughly like this. (a) Commodity exchange should be conceived as an equation. To make sense of the "exchange of equivalents" we must suppose that there is *something* present in equal quantities on both sides of the exchange. (b) Labor time is the only acceptable candidate for this "something" (since the use-values of commodities are incommensurable). 6. This argument has not persuaded many people. At least on the face of it, it seems to be full of holes. For instance: (1) Why do we *have* to conceive of exchange as an equation (other than, trivially, of equal monetary magnitudes)? There doesn't seem to be anything compelling about this "picture". (2) Even if we do think of exchange in that way, and if we accept Marx's point about the incommensurability of disparate use-values, is labor time really the only candidate for the thing that is equated? What about, say, energy-content? (3) Besides, when we get to volume III of Capital, Marx admits that embodied labor time is *not* actually equated in commodity exchange under capitalism, even in "long-run equilibrium," so to speak. 7. There would seem to be two possibilities here. (1) The confidence of Ricardo and Marx concerning the LTV was just misplaced. Their failure to come up with a convincing mechanism is fatal. (2) The *intuition* of Ricardo and Marx was sound, but outran their capacity to articulate a proper justification of the LTV: the job can, however, be done. I think the second interpretation is the right one. More later. == Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV defense, part 7
tion is analogous -- this is still Farjoun and Machover -- to statistical mechanics. The ideal gas laws, for instance, are "statistically emergent" from the interaction of millions of individual molecules. 9. But here is a further concern for future treatment. Suppose you grant the above, at least for the sake of argument. You may still wonder: But after all, what is really special about labor? Couldn't you do the same sort of statistical number using oil-content, timber-content or what-have-you? Why is the LTV of any more intrinsic significance than the OTV or the TTV? End of seventh message. == Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV defense, part 4
Back to Steedman [Note: I hope I'm not wearing out my welcome too rapidly. I think it will take about 10 messages in all, of roughly this length, to get the position I'm peddling "out into the open" -- perhaps Michael P can tell me to shut up if necessary.] 1. What does one need to know in order to calculate labor-values? The input-output structure of the economy, including intersectoral technical coefficients and direct labor coefficients. With this knowledge, one can invert the "Leontief matrix" (or perform an iterative approximation of same) and derive the full set of labor-values. (With the same information, and by means of the same computations, one can determine the vector of gross outputs required to support any given vector of final demand -- a basic planning problem.) 2. What does one need to know to calculate Sraffian prices? Basically the same: the full set of input-output coefficients, plus a distributional variable -- either the (uniform) wage or the (uniform) rate of profit. 3. Is it in any way necessary to calculate labor-values as a step on the way to calculating Sraffian prices? No. This is one of Steedman's key points, and of course he is right. In this sense there is no "transformation problem". *If* one's object is to derive the set of Sraffian prices or "prices of production," one does not have to go via labor-values. That would be an awkward detour. And the question "What is the correct mathematical relationship between labor-values and prices of production?" would seem to be of interest only if one has some prior commitment to labor-values. Why should one have any such commitment? Labor-values seem to be analytically redundant. 4. But this argument loses its force if, as I have claimed, it turns out that labor-values and prices of production are about equally good as predictors of actual prices in capitalist economies. Labor-values are a "detour" only if one's theoretical terminus is prices of production/Sraffian prices -- but why should *that* be one's theoretical terminus if one's ultimate object is to analyze real economies and their laws of motion? End of posting the fourth. == Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV defense, part 4
Back to Steedman [Note: I hope I'm not wearing out my welcome too rapidly. I think it will take about 10 messages in all, of roughly this length, to get the position I'm peddling "out into the open" -- perhaps Michael P can tell me to shut up if necessary.] 1. What does one need to know in order to calculate labor-values? The input-output structure of the economy, including intersectoral technical coefficients and direct labor coefficients. With this knowledge, one can invert the "Leontief matrix" (or perform an iterative approximation of same) and derive the full set of labor-values. (With the same information, and by means of the same computations, one can determine the vector of gross outputs required to support any given vector of final demand -- a basic planning problem.) 2. What does one need to know to calculate Sraffian prices? Basically the same: the full set of input-output coefficients, plus a distributional variable -- either the (uniform) wage or the (uniform) rate of profit. 3. Is it in any way necessary to calculate labor-values as a step on the way to calculating Sraffian prices? No. This is one of Steedman's key points, and of course he is right. In this sense there is no "transformation problem". *If* one's object is to derive the set of Sraffian prices or "prices of production," one does not have to go via labor-values. That would be an awkward detour. And the question "What is the correct mathematical relationship between labor-values and prices of production?" would seem to be of interest only if one has some prior commitment to labor-values. Why should one have any such commitment? Labor-values seem to be analytically redundant. 4. But this argument loses its force if, as I have claimed, it turns out that labor-values and prices of production are about equally good as predictors of actual prices in capitalist economies. Labor-values are a "detour" only if one's theoretical terminus is prices of production/Sraffian prices -- but why should *that* be one's theoretical terminus if one's ultimate object is to analyze real economies and their laws of motion? End of posting the fourth. == Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV defense, part 2
First substantive remarks: On Sraffa-Steedman
==
1. There is no doubt a nice Latin name for the fallacy of seeking to
defend one's own position by attacking one's opponent's.
Nonetheless I will open by doing exactly that. Why? Because there
is considerable truth in the dictum "It takes a theory to beat a
theory"; and I think that skepticism among progressive economists
concerning the LTV has as one of its bases this sort of thought: Why
conjure with the primitive Ricardo-Marx LTV -- at best only a first
approximation -- when for the same price (i.e. at the same sort of
level of abstraction) one can have the *correct* (i.e. Sraffa-
Steedman) theory? I wish, therefore, to undermine this thought. (Of
course, if the only thing that could be said in favor of the LTV is that
the Sraffa-Steedman theory is faulty, this would not cut much ice.
But please remember what I said about the provisional suspension of
disbelief: there *are* positive arguments to be made too.)
2. Although theorists may sometimes be inclined to forget, the
equalized rate of profit is NOT a fact. It is, however, an assumption
that is absolutely crucial to all theories of Sraffian derivation.
Farjoun ("Production of commodities by means of what?" in Mandel
(ed.) Ricardo, Marx, Sraffa) is able to show, for instance, that many
Steedman-type examples, of the sort used to demonstrate the frailty
of the LTV, fall apart and become economically meaningless given
the slightest deviation from this assumption. (Yes, Marx assumed an
equalized rate of profit too, when producing the concept of prices of
production, but the point is that this assumption is *not* crucial to
the LTV as such -- more on this later.)
3. What IS a fact, is that the distribution of the rate of profit in
capitalist economies is quite wide, and broadly stable over time.
Yes, there are forces working in the direction of equalization, but
there are complementary forces working in the direction of dis-
equalization; and the joint outcome of these forces seems to be an
"equilibrium" degree of dispersion of profit rates (with different
capitals occupying different places in the distribution at different
times). (Farjoun and Machover, Laws of Chaos, Verso, 1983)
4. It is therefore not at all obvious that a theory based centrally on
the assumption of an equalized rate of profit has any claim to
*correctness*, to the status of a benchmark against which the
deficiencies of the LTV may be assessed.
5. The greater the equilibrium dispersion of profit rates, the worse
are Sraffian prices as approximations to actual prices -- or even to
their "centers of gravity," discounting the effects of short-run supply-
demand disequilibria. On the other hand, on the maintained
hypothesis of an equalized rate of profit, the greater the dispersion of
the value composition of capital, the worse are labor-values as
approximations to actual prices. Since both of these distributions are
non-degenerate, the question of whether Sraffian prices or labor-
values offer the better systematic approximation to actual prices is an
empirical one. The evidence to date shows, with remarkable
consistency across data-sets drawn from different capitalist
economies and different time periods, that the two approximations
are *roughly equally good*. It is not the case that labor-values are a
crude first approximation, and Sraffian prices a clearly superior
second approximation.
I have made this point before, but I wanted to set it out
systematically before developing its implications.
End of second posting.
==
Allin Cottrell
Department of Economics
Wake Forest University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(910) 759-5762
==
LTV defense, part 3
1. At this point I shall digress briefly to cover a flank, i.e. to address a concern that I suspect many students of Marxism may have. 2. I appear to be treating the LTV and the Sraffian system as alternative theories of (the "systematic component" of) relative prices. But isn't this to miss the point? Wasn't Marx's Capital subtitled a Critique of Political Economy, not a Continuation of same? How can I bracket Ricardo and Marx as proponents of the LTV when Marx was concerned to explode Ricardo, not merely to second him? (I think Jim Devine has something like this in mind, and perhaps others too.) 3. There is some force in this objection, but I think it is overdone. True, Marx's primary object was not to develop a theory of relative prices. He wanted to lay bare the basis of profit in the capitalist exploitation of labor, to discern the "laws of motion" of capitalism, and to demonstrate that capitalism is a historically transient mode of production, whose internal contradictions necessarily propel it in the direction of its supercession by socialism. From this standpoint, the LTV was but a stepping stone towards a theory of *surplus value* -- something quite foreign to Ricardo. And, it may be said, whatever is valid or salvageable from among the latter ambitions may be reconstructed without appeal to the LTV. 4. This last claim I will tackle shortly. For the moment I want to point out that although a theory of relative prices was not Marx's central concern, as such, it does nonetheless play a key role in his work -- if not in Roemerian reconstructions of it. And it is a valid scientific question in its own right. (And I might add that Ricardo, too, placed the LTV in the service of an analysis of the "laws of motion" of capitalism as he saw them -- e.g. the progress towards the famous "stationary state" via a falling rate of profit.) 5. Marx's analysis of exploitation assumes that the prices of commodities in terms of money are in proportion to their labor-values. There is weak and a strong reading of this assumption. On the weak reading, it is just an expositional tactic for representing at the level of the individual factory and the individual worker, social relations that obtain between the class of workers and the class of capitalists. It projects onto the *individual* working day a division into surplus and necessary labour time that is in reality a relationship between parts of the *total social working day*. This is divided between time spent in industries producing workers' consumer goods and time spend producing goods used by the capitalists. The weak position would say that these conditions of projection need not hold empirically for the thesis about the social totality to be valid. 6. The strong position would state that the conditions of projection are more or less empirically valid, in the sense that there is such a strong correlation between the prices of commodities and their values that what is true at the social level is also true at the micro level. 7. Hence, although the principal concern of Marx in his famous chapter on the commodity may have been the analysis of the *social form* of value, this does not indicate that he was unconcerned with the empirical relationship between price and value. Generally he held that movements in price reflected movements in value. This indeed was the specific form of representation of the category value (abstract social labour) in capitalist society. The essence of this form of representation was that there was a homomorphism between the structure of prices and the structure of values. Marx of course allows for disturbing elements -- temporary imbalances of supply and demand, differing organic compositions of capital between branches, etc. -- but the existence of these distorting factors no more invalidates the underlying hypothesis than the reality of air resistance invalidated Galileo's theory of falling bodies. The claim is that the underlying tendency will produce clear measurable effects, which can be distinguished from the effects of the disturbing factors. [Paras 5-7 above are based on notes made by Paul Cockshott.] End of third posting. == Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
LTV defense
Emboldened by positive remarks from some pen-lers I hereby
embark on a defense of the classical labor theory of value (LTV),
or something closely resembling it.
Preface
===
1. I realize that I have an uphill struggle ahead, given the volume
and authority of the critiques that are out there. These critiques --
I'm thinking mainly of those produced by people who are broadly
sympathetic to a revised marxism as they conceive it, e.g.
Steedman, Roemer, Elster -- are clearly smart work, and although
I strongly believe that they are ultimately wrong, insofar as they
lead to a rejection of the LTV, they make many undeniably
correct points along the way. Further, I think it's true that many
(though certainly not all) of the defenses of the LTV that have
been made to date partake in some degree or other of the sort of
obscurantism, dogmatism, or general woolly thinking that are
anathema to a razor-sharp logician such as Steedman. My
strategy here will be to offer a sampling of arguments that serve to
sever the valid points made by the critics from their general anti-
LTV conclusion, as well as a sampling of positive grounds for
considering the LTV scientifically useful. Some willingness on the
part of readers *provisionally* to "suspend disbelief" is
presupposed. (That is, if I am called on every point at the outset,
I will not get very far.)
2. I also realize that this electronic forum is not suitable for the
posting of long, detailed arguments. If my own practice is
anything to go by, long messages from the lists get saved at first
("for future reading"), then deleted a month or so later when one
is in danger of exceeding one's disk quotas. I will therefore try to
serve up this argument in reasonably small and digestible chunks.
For anyone who would like a synoptic view of where the
argument is headed -- well, I'm afraid I can't yet point you to a
finished paper on the subject. The ideas I will present are the
outcome of several years' discussion with my friend Paul
Cockshott (and have been influenced in some respects by the
work of Farjoun and Machover). We have a number of
publications dealing with the use of a labor-time calculus for
planning purposes, including a recent book, Towards a New
Socialism (e-mail me for details if you wish), and our general
thoughts on the LTV are quite closely related to the ideas in these
works; but we have not yet written up our stuff on the LTV itself.
We do have two lengthy documents on the subject, which we are
willing to share under the right circumstances, but they are more
at the level of notes than even working papers.
3. While I understand Gil Skillman's suggestion that I start out
from vol. 1, chap. 1 of Capital, I shall not do so. I think there
are several good reasons for accepting the LTV in some form, but
the argument given by Marx at the beginning of Capital *is not
one of them* (IMO). I will have some comments to make about that
argument, but not at first.
End of preface.
End of first posting.
======
Allin Cottrell
Department of Economics
Wake Forest University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(910) 759-5762
==
Re: the aggregate demand curve
On Fri, 11 Mar 1994 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The price level is taken as exogenous in defining the LM, and by extension, in deriving the AD curve, so the question translates as follows: is there any way to explain a shift in the price level that does not presuppose a change in the money supply? The answer is yes, from an upward shift in (the non-vertical section of) the aggregate supply curve, due say to some "supply shock" like the OPEC price increases of the early '70s. Or from a shift of the AD curve for reasons other than monetary expansion as such: fiscal policy or swings in private-sector investment demand. In AD/AS models, this will cause a temporary departure from potential gnp, which will in turn cause a change in inflation relative to money growth. Integrated over time, this amounts to a change in the price level. ====== Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
Re: the aggregate demand curve
On Fri, 11 Mar 1994 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The price level is taken as exogenous in defining the LM, and by extension, in deriving the AD curve, so the question translates as follows: is there any way to explain a shift in the price level that does not presuppose a change in the money supply? The answer is yes, from an upward shift in (the non-vertical section of) the aggregate supply curve, due say to some "supply shock" like the OPEC price increases of the early '70s. Or from a shift of the AD curve for reasons other than monetary expansion as such: fiscal policy or swings in private-sector investment demand. In AD/AS models, this will cause a temporary departure from potential gnp, which will in turn cause a change in inflation relative to money growth. Integrated over time, this amounts to a change in the price level. ====== Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
RE: marx on money
I'm not sure I understand Jim's references to Marx's "silliness" in assuming that prices are proportional to (labor) values, or to the "so-called labor theory of value". Shaikh has showed, by reference to both US and Italian input-output tables, that values and prices are indeed very close to proportional, with R^2's on the order of 96-98 per cent. (In "Ricardo, Marx, Sraffa", E. Mandel, ed., 1984). Petrovic and Ochoa (CJE, 1987 and 1989 respectively), confirmed this result on Yugoslav and further US data. Paul Cockshott and I have recently replicated Shaikh's study using the 1984 UK input-output tables: our findings were essentially the same. Ricardo and Marx were right: the labor theory of value stands up to empirical scrutiny as well as just about any theory in economics, and better than most! ====== Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
Re: Interest rates and politics
I don't quite understand Trond's reasoning re. the money market. If I read him right, he's saying that widespread insolvencies somehow tell the possessors of liquidity that the rate they are charging for lending the stuff is unreasonably high -- i.e., that insolvencies lead to a reuction in the rate of interest via their effect on the supply side in the money market. To me, this seems perverse. If (potential) lenders see insolvencies, won't that make lending seem all the riskier? And won't that tend to raise rates further, via an increased "risk premium"? I'd have thought that if a spate of insolvencies is associated with a reduction in the rate of interest, this association would have to come about via a reuction in the demand for loanable funds (i.e., potential borrowers are forced to think twice) rather than via an increase in supply. On the supply side, lenders should be willing to lend at lower rates, the _safer_ that lending appears to be. ====== Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
Re: Interest rates and politics
I don't quite understand Trond's reasoning re. the money market. If I read him right, he's saying that widespread insolvencies somehow tell the possessors of liquidity that the rate they are charging for lending the stuff is unreasonably high -- i.e., that insolvencies lead to a reuction in the rate of interest via their effect on the supply side in the money market. To me, this seems perverse. If (potential) lenders see insolvencies, won't that make lending seem all the riskier? And won't that tend to raise rates further, via an increased "risk premium"? I'd have thought that if a spate of insolvencies is associated with a reduction in the rate of interest, this association would have to come about via a reuction in the demand for loanable funds (i.e., potential borrowers are forced to think twice) rather than via an increase in supply. On the supply side, lenders should be willing to lend at lower rates, the _safer_ that lending appears to be. ====== Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
Slavery and capitalism
The points made by Paul Cockshott and Jim Devine, regarding the differences between slavery and capitalism, are well taken. Nontheless, I don't think it would be an oxymoron to describe the system of the antebellum South as "slave capitalism". This is because (a) there existed a well- developed market and trade in slaves, and (b) the output of slave labor took the commodity-form to a large degree (on the big plantations at any rate). That is, the plantations partook of the circuit M-C-M', with the "C" taking the form of slaves and inanimate means of production rather than labor-power and means of production. Whether slave capitalism could have existed as a mode of production in its own right, or whether it was inherently parasitic on "regular" capitalism, is another matter. Some of Paul's points suggest the latter (i.e. the internal market within the slave system would have been too restricted). ====== Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University [EMAIL PROTECTED] (910) 759-5762 ==
Various debates
Pen-l subscribers may be interested in the following, which was
originally posted on the Post-Keynesian Thought network. It
relates to an old debate over pen-l and refers to a book which
may be of interest to many concerning how socialism should be
organized.
I dropped Allin Cottrell's third point, which didn't seem of
interest to pen-l.-- Jim Devine
Allin Cottrell's Original message (abbreviated):
Some thoughts on a few things that have whizzed by
lately:
(1) Doug Henwood cites Nancy Folbre's characterization of
Albert and Hahnel's participatory economics as "one long
student council meeting," and wonders how supporters of
such schemes would reply. I can't speak for A and H, and
am somewhat reluctant to criticize their work when they are
(apparently) not on PKT to make their case, but I will say
that Paul Cockshott and I ("Towards a New Socialism")
envisage democratic decision-making as having a broader,
parametric role in a planned economy, while many of the
details are worked out more or less algorithmically within
those parameters, avoiding participatory overload.
(2) Is there any prospect for linking up the sort of
paradigmatically PK concerns expressed by, eg, Paul
Davidson with the planning proposals that some of us have
been discussing? Keynes thought that the shortcomings of
capitalism were severe enough to require "the more or less
comprehensive socialisation of investment". How seriously
should we take this? I'm not aware that Keynes ever
spelled out what he meant by this, or discussed the sort
of institutions that would be required to undertake this
"socialisation," but on the face of it, it sure sounds
like planning. No, it's not on the US agenda for the near
future, but is it something PKs should discuss?
==
Allin Cottrell
Department of Economics
Wake Forest University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(910) 759-5762
==
end of copied message.
in pen-l solidarity,
Jim Devine BITNET: jndf@lmuacad. INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles, CA 90045-2699 USA
310/338-2948 (off); 310/202-6546 (hm); FAX: 310/338-1950
