Brad De Long wrote:
> Well, from the next-to-last page of _Wage Labour and Capital_, we have:
>
> "Let us some up: The more productive capital grows, the more
snip
The point is not that you should take this early lecture of Marx or Notes on Wagner [I thought we were finished with Althusser??] as the referent. Marx's collected works constitutes and entire library. His thinking evolved over time. You cannot fairly take a paragraph, post it up as a law, then then disprove it, proudly trumpeting an intellectual victory. Debating points, maybe.
To try to evaluate Marx fairly, you need to take a broad swath of his work into account. What is most valuable about Marx is his method, not a prediction. Marx was way off about some of his predictions, especially in politics.
Most economists have a poor record at prediction. Keynes made big mistakes on the stock market. He was way off at times. Does that prove or disprove rational expectations or the theory of natural selection or anything else for that matter?
Of course, Brad often affixes a smiley to his notes, so we cannot get too worked up about such matters.
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu