Better let them moulder in their libraries, if you ask me. I just read Kliman on Okishio and I didn't think it advanced a jot or a tittle beyond the debates about Morishima which I remember having in the Conference of Socialist Economists 20 years ago, when I was a founder-editor of Capital & Class and published Diane Elson's collection of essays on the subject as the CSE's first book. And I don't think that advanced us much beyond Engels on value. The whole thing is a mouldy old red herring.
Mark
Louis Proyect wrote:
> 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)
>
-- Mark Jones http://www.geocities.com/~comparty