I think I can explain this. Coontz is searching for a solution to the famous fictitious ground-rent problematic, which would in Marxist circles amount to as big a breakthrough as Fermat's theorem was in higher mathematics.
In the July, 1996 "Journal of the Value Theory and Ballroom Dancing Society", Prof. Drew A. Blank published a computer program that purported to solve the vexing fictitious ground-rent problem once and for all. I have the program at my fingertips and will share it with lbo-talk mavens, who are in the know about Perl and value theory, a very small and elite section of the population, indeed.
I will run it later today and announce the results.
FICTITIOUS GROUND-RENT COMPUTER PROGRAM
chop($thispgm=`basename $0`); # Name of this program. &dsspath; # get environment variables;
@rq = ("ctime.pl",
"sybperl.pl",
"$DSS/scripts/dssinprg.pl",
for $rq (@rq) {
require "$rq" || die "$driver: Could not install $rq - $@\n"; } $server = $ENV{'DSQUERY'}; $sdb = &dssnode() ."," . "U"; # Get argument for dwhscure. #print "SDB:$sdb\n"; $pwords = &dsscure("$sdb"); # Get db password. unless (($pwords =~ /^(\w+)\W(\w+)\W/) && ($sybid = $1) && ($sybpw = $2)) {
die "$driver: Security information retrieval failed for dss. Now exiting....\n";}
while (<FTPCNT>) {
$ftpcnt = $_;
} @ftp_array = split(' ',$ftpcnt); $ftpyear = $ftp_array[0]; $ftpcount = $ftp_array[1];
#------------------------------------------------------------------- # Compare the count returned from C program executed above # to ftp count. Cancel if not equal. #------------------------------------------------------------------- if ($cpgm_cnts_array[0] != $ftpcount)
{die "Calculated $cpgm_cnts_array[0] not = ftp count $ftpcount\n";}
&labor_tots;
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)