> To Louis Proyect: ... You may also want to
> think about whether it is racist to ridicule an article for not
> being in popular English when its author is Costa Rican.
This is Levy-speak. This is a characteristic cover for the kind of academic posturing these 'value-theoreticians' are involved in. It is not only offensive, it is absurd to say that Louis Proyect is a racist. Then there is this insufferable, arrogant nonsense:
> You see, there are militants who care by ideas, people who
> *rightly* will have their confidence shaken when they're informed
> that the foundations on which they base their ideas and actions
> have been disproven.
>
The Levyites are not just the final arbiters of gentlemanly good taste,
not just Olympian umpires of others' racism, they are also
self-appointed keepers of the Arc of the Value Covenant: while the plebs
sit at their feet open-mouthed and trembling in case they hear that,
alas, the runes have been read and the answer came out wrong after all.
I have news for Andrew Kliman: workers will struggle whether or not the Transformation Problem is solved. As for the farcical idea that what Marx was doing was in any way analogous to what the Levyites are doing, a little humility is in order here as well.
I concede that I was wrong about two things: Andrew does not have tenure and he is not a Trot. I am happy to be corrected. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with either, though.
Actually, I recently read some stuff by Freeman and Carchedi and was duly impressed. I even think that Andrew has a role to play, and what's more, I have filed away some of his answers to Rakesh. I think that the folks who are just now starting Capital 1 on the LI-CRG could benefit very much from Andrew's presence, and I said as much the other day to someone else on this list. What I can't stomach is the insufferable snobbery that goes with the territory, it seems: and the incredible blindness about history. Lou Proyect and I disagree completely about Soviet history, for example, but we remain friends and are capable of holding a conversation. It is a pity that is not also true of Andrew Kliman.
Enough.
Mark