Nuts and berries

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Dec 14 08:40:43 PST 1998


JayHecht at aol.com wrote:


>In a message dated 98-12-14 11:16:09 EST, you write:
>
><<
> And what does it all tell you, Rakesh? What do you gain from all that
> tedious work? Those are sincere, not rhetorical, questions.
> >>
>Well for one - if you accept Shaikh & Tonak's estimates - the rate of surplus
>value extraction did not slowdown, even though so-called measured productivity
>decelerated after 1973. Moreover, the ratio of "unproductive/productive"
>workers has risen dramatically since the 1970s. Bottom line: you can't just
>blindly accept NIPA data to "prove" or "disprove" Marx/marxian claims. You
>need to reconceptualize the accounting apparatus and do a shitload of tedious
>scut work (which Anwar and Ahmet have done) to get a handle on the empirial
>macroeconomic claims that Marx put forward.

Ok, and having done that, what do you conclude? I searched in vain for any conclusions in their book.

Doug



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