Krugman on Marx

[Brad De Long]

>In message <35D2FE30.87027C8D at ecst.csuchico.edu>, michael perelman
><michael at ecst.csuchico.edu> writes
>>
>>
>>Brad De Long wrote:
>>
>>> Haven't these efforts at refutation (and those aimed at absolute
>>> immiserization of the working class) been successful?
>>>
>>
>>It depends what you mean by successful.  If you ascribe a crude theory to
>>Marx,
>>then it is easy to refute it.  Did Marx actually insist that absolute
>>immiseration or the falling rate of profit would inevitably occur?
>
>
>Michael is right. It was only because the Stalinist left of the thirties
>insisted upon foisting upon Marx their view that working class living
>standards would decline in absolute terms that Marx was 'disproved' by
>the post war boom.

Trotsky too. Trotsky argued during the 1930s that Marx's theory was one of
relative immiserization as long as capitalism was still far from its final
crisis, and then absolute immiserization as the final crisis neared...

Brad DeLong