tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post4775295291879169048..comments2024-03-28T17:08:15.784-07:00Comments on Social Democracy for the 21st Century: A Realist Alternative to the Modern Left: Response to Jehu on “Four Questions for LK on Money”Lord Keyneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06556863604205200159noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post-42995371946007228202016-04-09T11:09:51.629-07:002016-04-09T11:09:51.629-07:00LK,
Marx predicted the winner of every Olympic cu...LK, <br />Marx predicted the winner of every Olympic curling match via a series of acrostic messages in Kapital. It is not rewriting history to find these only after the event. If you read it carefully you will find do Marx predicted *everything*. You just need to keep at it. Ken Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08207803092348071005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post-87717625373644716512016-04-08T23:32:41.990-07:002016-04-08T23:32:41.990-07:00"All you just did was quote Engels saying exa...<i>"All you just did was quote Engels saying exactly what I said he said: the law is generally valid but it has a different outward appearance within different systems of production"</i><br /><br />You are now a proven liar.<br /><br />You said that (1) in vol. 1 the "law of value" is unrealistic, or just a "analytical" or "pedagogical" device and (2) that Engels wasn't "defend[ing] the 'law of value' empirically" per se. <br /><br />Both wrong.<br />Lord Keyneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06556863604205200159noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post-50217289381449896992016-04-08T23:30:32.392-07:002016-04-08T23:30:32.392-07:00No, Anonymous, you claimed that in vol. 1 the &quo...No, Anonymous, you claimed that in vol. 1 the "law of value" is unrealistic, or just a "analytical" or "pedagogical" device. <br /><br />(1) there is no evidence for this is vol. 1.<br /><br />(2) Sombart and others took your view and Engels (who was in a position to know) strongly rejected that view and defended that law of value as a real empirical and historical phenomenon, to be applied to the premodern world of commodity exchange.<br /><br />Either admit you were wrong or stop wasting my time.Lord Keyneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06556863604205200159noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post-87405871788890645482016-04-08T13:22:17.680-07:002016-04-08T13:22:17.680-07:00Engels simultaneously maintains that the law of va...Engels <i>simultaneously</i> maintains that the law of value holds for the capitalist period, but possesses "universal validity" (or "general" depending on your translation) for pre-capitalist commodity exchange.<br /><br />Do you understand how this can be? I can explain it if you need, but I think it will mean a lot more if you can piece it together yourself. (One hint: Place it in the context of his response to Loria's remark...)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post-62980380979696824782016-04-08T13:13:02.723-07:002016-04-08T13:13:02.723-07:00All you just did was quote Engels saying exactly w...All you just did was quote Engels saying exactly what I said he said: the law is generally valid but it has a different outward appearance within different systems of production, and Loria is mistaken in his characterization of it.<br /><br />And I specifically asked for "hard evidence," not more fodder for speculation. The quotes you pull rely almost entirely upon imprinting meaning, reading between the lines, and ignoring other contextualizing writings from the same period. It wouldn't pass for scholarship, is what I'm saying.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post-2064645231561176912016-04-08T12:38:04.244-07:002016-04-08T12:38:04.244-07:00Anonymous@April 8, 2016 at 7:15 AM:
Moreover, you...Anonymous@April 8, 2016 at 7:15 AM:<br /><br />Moreover, you claim that in volume 1 of <i>Capital</i> the law of value was meant by Marx just as a mere simplifying assumption or a mere abstract theoretical device or “analytical” or “pedagogical” device.<br /><br />That was the view of Werner Sombart, Conrad Schmidt, and Wilhelm Lexis:<br /><br /><b>(1)</b> Werner Sombart:<br />The law of value is not empirical fact but an ideal or logical one.<br />Sombart, Werner. 1894. “Zur Kritik des ökonomischen Systems von Karl Marx” [Toward a Critique of the Economic System of Karl Marx], <i>Archiv für soziale Gesetzgebung und Statistik</i> 7: 555–594.<br /><br /><b>(2)</b> Conrad Schmidt: <br />The law of value is just a “necessary theoretical point of departure” but not something empirically present in the “phenomena of prices under competition.”<br />Schmidt, Conrad. 1895. “Der dritte Band des Kapital,” <i>Sozialpolitisches Zentralblatt</i> 22 (25th February): 254–258.<br /><br /><b>(3)</b> Wilhelm Lexis:<br /><i>“Value, as conceived by Marx, is thus a purely theoretical conception. The thing is never to be found in reality, neither in the normal exchanges of commodities nor in the consciousness of the individuals who take part in these exchanges.”</i> (Lexis 1895: 11–12).<br />Lexis, W. 1895. “The Concluding Volume of Marx’s Capital,” <i>Quarterly Journal of Economics</i> 10 (October): 1–33.<br />--------------------------<br />But Engels vehemently <i>rejected</i> all of these views. <br /><br />For Engels the law of value in volume 1 was a real empirical and historical phenomenon, to be applied to the premodern world of commodity exchange.Lord Keyneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06556863604205200159noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post-79154023833759866532016-04-08T08:49:00.772-07:002016-04-08T08:49:00.772-07:00As for Marx not publishing vol. 3, after the publi...As for Marx not publishing vol. 3, after the publication of volume 1 of Capital Marx seems to have tried very subtly to admit to Engels in a letter of 8 January, 1868, and even in other letters, that the “law of value” in volume 1 was irrelevant to real world capitalism:<br /><br />http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2015/05/duhrings-review-of-capital-and-marxs.html<br /><br />We can also trace the history of desperate Marxist propaganda and apologetic tricks over the contradiction between vol. 1 and vol. 3:<br /><br />http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-critical-responses-to-volume-3-of.htmlLord Keyneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06556863604205200159noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post-58289599973728972042016-04-08T08:42:09.726-07:002016-04-08T08:42:09.726-07:00"Engels wasn't "defend[ing] the '...<i>"Engels wasn't "defend[ing] the 'law of value' empirically" per se."</i><br /><br />Yes, he was. That is the whole point of the Appendix.<br /><br />You either (1) haven't read it properly (and are incompetent) or (2) are a bald-faced liar.<br /><br />Engels in the Supplement:<br /><br /><i>"<b>To sum up, Marx’s law of value applies universally, as much as any economic laws do apply, for the entire period of simple commodity production,</b> i.e. up to the time at which this undergoes a modification by the onset of the capitalist form of production. <b>Up till then, prices gravitate to the values determined by Marx’s law and oscillate around these values,</b> so that the more completely simple commodity production develops, the more do average prices coincide with values for longer periods when not interrupted by external violent disturbances, and with the insignificant variations we mentioned earlier. <b>Thus the Marxian law of value has a universal economic validity for an era lasting from the beginning of the exchange that transforms products into commodities down to the fifteenth century of our epoch.</b> But commodity exchange dates from a time before any written history, going back to at least 3500 B.C. in Egypt, and 4000 B.C. or maybe even 6000 B.C. in Babylon; thus the law of value prevailed for a period of some five to seven millennia. We may now admire the profundity of Mr Loria in calling the value that was generally and directly prevalent throughout this time a value at which commodities never were sold nor could be sold, and which no economist will ever bother himself with if he has a glimmer of healthy common sense!”</i> (Engels 1991 [1895]: 1034–1038).<br />---------------<br />If you are not going to be honest, there is no point in engaging with you.<br />Lord Keyneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06556863604205200159noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post-75990900773638911862016-04-08T08:29:30.883-07:002016-04-08T08:29:30.883-07:00Engels wasn't "defend[ing] the 'law o...Engels wasn't "defend[ing] the 'law of value' empirically" per se. If you read the supplement, you'll see he was responding to Loria's characterization of value as something "commodities do not sell for and never can sell for." Loria goes too far and winds up with a caricature of the theory, so Engels draws upon the pre-capitalist case as the clearest salient rebuttal.<br /><br />If you decontextualize what he was saying, I can see how one might misconstrue it as a claim of the validity of the law of value rather than as a point about the law's form of appearance under different conditions of production.<br /><br />As for your speculation as to Marx's reason for not finishing volumes 2 or 3, can you find any hard evidence to support this? We have access to a vast collection of private correspondences of his that were never intended to be published. Many of these contain candid thoughts that, had they become public, would surely have caused grave embarrassment for Marx. Do you know of any point near or after the publication of volume 1 (say, from 1861 onward, since that's when he began the manuscripts) at which he said something in support of your hypothesis?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post-61950178489505893102016-04-08T08:13:27.604-07:002016-04-08T08:13:27.604-07:00I have out of topic question in the time of gold s...I have out of topic question in the time of gold standard the supply of money been exogenous or the financial sector and government had tricks to overcome this?disequilibriumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09760922141392402211noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post-72374484768322157292016-04-08T07:40:13.398-07:002016-04-08T07:40:13.398-07:00"The law of value holds in general, but he al...<i>"The law of value holds in general, but he also extends the general to the individual case as well, knowing fully that this is unrealistic, again, for analytical/pedagogical purposes."</i><br /><br />No, that is a pathetic Marxist myth. <br /><br />No, Marx does not say in vol. 1 <br />that the "law of value" is unrealistic, or just a "analytical" or "pedagogical" device. <br /><br />If this was how it was understood by Marx, then why did Engels feel bound to defend the "law of value" empirically as what was true in the period of pre-modern commodity exchange?<br /><br />You also totally ignore the fact that Marx never even wanted to publish vol. 3 of <i>Capital</i>, and this was probably because he understood full well that those 2 volumes are theoretically incoherent.<br />Lord Keyneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06556863604205200159noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6245381193993153721.post-22768317460741887332016-04-08T07:15:29.288-07:002016-04-08T07:15:29.288-07:00In volume 1, commodities tend to exchange at their...<i>In volume 1, commodities tend to exchange at their true labour values (see here).</i><br /><br />I've seen you reference "per capita" figures to make a point at one time or another. In light of the above, I'm surprised that you've not dismissed such as blatantly unrealistic.<br /><br />Think about it: Per capita GDP is a transformation to enable general-case considerations to be made for a "given" citizen. Yet how many people in a country actually make this exact amount in a year? Vanishingly few, generally; most are above or below it. But you seem to accept such a technique as being useful for either analytical or pedagogical purposes.<br /><br />Yet this, as it happens, is the <i>exact</i> thing Marx is doing in volume 1. The law of value holds in general, but he also extends the general to the individual case as well, knowing fully that this is unrealistic, again, for analytical/pedagogical purposes.<br /><br />You're prepared to call volume 1 a different value theory from volume 3, as opposed to an analytical transformation of the same theory. Are you not also prepared to suggest that per capita statistics, rather than a transformation, are simply nonsensical?<br /><br />If not, then I would posit we've found an asymmetry in your thinking; you're effectively excluding the very possibility that Marx is coherent straightaway by denying him the ability to perform even very basic analytical operations.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com