tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post8668603121384371330..comments2024-03-28T17:08:15.784-07:00Comments on Social Democracy for the 21st Century: A Realist Alternative to the Modern Left: Alexander Gray on the Two Contradictions in Marx’s Theory of Surplus Value in Volume 1 of CapitalLord Keyneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06556863604205200159noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post-71221986573675552552016-02-08T07:54:16.536-08:002016-02-08T07:54:16.536-08:00Yet more evidence: the many critics who pointed to...Yet more evidence: the many critics who pointed to the contradictions between vol. 1 and vol. 3 were noted **quite casually** even by early Marxists.<br /><br />E.g., Georgi Plekhanov in a review of Benedetto Croce's <i>Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx</i>:<br /><br /><i>“Indeed, the offspring of that remarkable specimen of human nature are most numerous. <b>They include all those ‘critics’ of Marx who believe in the existence of a contradiction between Volumes One and Three of Capital</b>. In a review of Mr. Frank’s book Marx’s Theory of Value and Its Significance …, we showed that, in reality, there is no contradiction between the two volumes, …. <br /><br />For Rodbertus, the entire law of value consisted in the exchange relations of commodities being determined by the amount of labour spent on the production of each of them. In other words, Rodbertus confused the operation of the law with one of the modes (“forms”) of its operation determined in each particular period by society’s economic structure. <b>The same error is repeated by all who think that in Volume Three of Capital Marx discarded his theory of value.”</b></i><br />Plekhanov, Georgi. 1901. “On Croce’s Book,” <br />https://libcom.org/library/groces-book-georgi-plekhanov<br />------------------<br /><br />So right there Plekhanov refers to “all those” or “all those critics” who think this: it is clear there are many, not few. <br /><br />Plekhanov even refers to another one: Simeon Frank’s <i>Teoriya tsennosti Marksa i yeyo znachenie</i> [Marx’s Theory of Value and its Significance] (1900). Frank was another early Marxist in the 1890s who noticed this contradiction and abandoned Marxism.<br /><br />So at this point your absurd claim that only a few people have thought vol. 1 contradicts vol. 3 is totally refuted -- by the evidence of early Marxists themselves.<br /><br />How do you feel now, chump? Like the halfwit you are? <br />Lord Keyneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06556863604205200159noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post-4370672115578077382016-02-08T06:41:34.684-08:002016-02-08T06:41:34.684-08:00(1) "First off, congratulations on finding a ...(1) <i>"First off, congratulations on finding a third voice to agree with you."</i><br /><br />The laughable statement of a liar and a troll.<br /><br />Let's just run through the list of people who agree that there is a fundamental contradiction between vol. 1 of <i>Capital</i> and volume 3:<br /><br />(1) Joan Robinson (Robinson 1950: 359), probably one of the most respected Post Keynesians.<br /><br />(2) Gerald F. Shove (Shove 1944: 48–49), a Marshallian neoclassical.<br /><br />(3) Werner Sombart (1894), a German Historical School economist who early on was sympathetic to Marx's theories.<br /><br />(4) Achille Loria (1895; English trans. Loria 1920) am Italian socialist sympathetic to Marx, and <br /><br />(5) Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (1949 [1896]), a Austrian.<br />-----<br />Gray is no. 6, and we could find numerous other people too, e.g., probably Benedetto Croce and Eugen Dühring. <br /><br />And already the people listed above are a broad spread of people from different schools.<br /><br />Furthermore, your pathetic attempt to dismiss Gray's statements here only because he was an Austrian reeks of the ad hominem fallacy. That is NOT rational grounds for dismissing what he says. E.g., Rothbard opposed the US war in Vietnam. <br /><br />Was opposing the US war in Vietnam therefore wrong because Rothbard was an Austrian? You, Hedlund, are an idiot.<br />Lord Keyneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06556863604205200159noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post-59129160136436558402016-02-08T06:07:05.934-08:002016-02-08T06:07:05.934-08:00First off, congratulations on finding a third voic...First off, congratulations on finding a third voice to agree with you. Still not a Marxist, of course; instead, someone whose work only appears on mises.org and is claimed by Rothbard as his "favorite" historian of economics.<br /><br />Isn't it funny how social democrats will always side with the far right over the far left?<br /><br />First off, Gray gives a much clearer summary than you've yet managed, and should be applauded for that. But for one reason or another -- likely a mix of irrealism and ideology -- he takes an issue that has been no trouble for the overwhelming majority of readers of Marx, and renders it scandal by refusing to accept the man's own solution -- not because there's any problem with the math, not because it doesn't make sense, but because he seeks something mystical where only materialism lurks. <br /><br />"There must be more," Gray seems to insist. But no, it's really that simple. Some of the people responding to Engels's challenge were even able to figure it out in advance. One would think this would give pause to someone reading the abstraction as somehow "irreconcilable." But ideology is a hell of a drug.<br /><br />Case in point:Hedlundnoreply@blogger.com