Grossmann

Rakesh Bhandari bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU
Fri Sep 11 20:34:22 PDT 1998


If I thought nothing hung on your continuing insistence to present Grossmann's scheme in terms of a physical shortage I would not continue.

But please note that in your last post you simultaneously dismiss as specious my actually correct argument that the scheme breaks down due to an insufficient rate of exploitation (previously you had denied an increased rate of exploitation would enable resumption of accumulation without excess capacity--which by the way is not simply a debating point but the window on the world of capitalist dynamics) and then grant it because it is indeed equivalent to your cruder proposition that the scheme breaks down due to a physical shortage of goods.

Of course it would be more illuminating to say that the scheme breaks down because not enough surplus value or surplus physical product (if you must) had been produced in the previous period. To declare in the most unilluminating manner it breaks down because of a physical shortage of goods conflates Grossmann's scheme with a kind of Malthusianism (and thus caricatures it) and elides Grossmann's emphasis on the social relations of production.

There is nothing to be gained from your "physical shortage of investment goods" interpretation of what the scheme means but the heaping of more distortion on the most important figure in the recovery of Marx's crisis theory. The scheme breaks down due to a shorage of surplus value which--as you now recognize--a higher rate of exploitation would have deferred.

I did call you paranoid in my first reply. Sorry I forgot. That you remembered so far back is telling.

Rakesh Bhandari



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