OPE-L (was Re: Krugman on Marx)

Louis Proyect lnp3 at panix.com
Tue Aug 18 07:13:22 PDT 1998


Andrew Kliman:
>The *real* problem here, of course, is that our critics have not
>been very interested, to put it mildly, in debating us in public.
>Not only has little appeared in print, but the place where most
>real debate has taken place, OPE-L, is also closed to the public.
>Had the objections been in the public domain, I of course would
>have been delighted to cite public sources.

I am skeptical of the importance of these sorts of debates. They used to occur with much more frequency on the Spoons Marxism lists and PEN-L and always seemed somewhat academic to me. I never realized that there was any question on the Left about the labor theory of value until I got on the Internet. There was a fellow named Steve Keene (I believe) who devoted his life to challenging this theory. Later on Justin Schwartz attacked it as well. It seems that John Roemer and other AM'ers had influenced him in this direction.

Isn't this the sort of controversy that can only have significance in the academy? You will always find bourgeois economists who challenge the fundamentals of Marxism and you will always find Marxish thought like AM that adapts to them. But in all of the deliberations of the OPE-L, is there a single article that transcends the narrow framework of controversies like Okishio? I remember when Andrew was subscribed to the Spoons list briefly and complained about all the irrelevant discussion going on. This was the complaint of other academics as well, especially the economists. They seemed to think that refuting Okishio was the most important task for Marxists. Isn't it possible that all this research into the LTV, etc. has very little bearing on the class struggle?

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)



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