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On Tue, 22 Jun 1999 13:20:01 Doug Henwood wrote:
>what's the
>point of these Marxian accounting systems. I'll ask the question that gets
>Jerry Levy so bent out of shape - what do these categories tell you that
>the intelligent use of bourgeois statistics can't?
That a falling rate of profit is a real concept not just a theory, that value and surplus value are economic categories that can be measured, not just "methaphysical" concepts used by stubborn leftists and that apologetic economists can no longer say that Marx is empirically false. Conventional stats on the other hand show you only those categories that serve their apologetic ahistorical view of capitalism.
I've read Shaikh &
>Tonak's book and I can't figure out the point of the exercise. My suspicion
>is that the point used to be to prove the inevitability of crisis and
>collapse, but all but the hardiest fundamentalists are shy about doing that
>now, so that's receded into the background. And without that point, it all
>seems like a scholastic exercise to me. But I'm willing, even eager, to be
>proven wrong, so please convince me to the contrary.
>
According to Anwar that was their original intention, that people are not using it for that purpose just goes to show the sorry state of Marxian economics. This, however, is no proof that Marxian categories are not crucial. Or are you actually implying that the relevancy of a theory is a function of its popularity?? The way I see it, professional economists no matter how marxist they think they are, would never be able to do scientific and unapologetic analysis as long as they get paid by capital itself. Marx already proved it himself that the best economic analysis of capitalism can only come from starving intellects outside the academia. So, Doug, no I can not convince you or myself that Marxian categories are useful because they are being activally used by social scientists, because they are not. However, if you want to analyze capitalism using Marx's political/economic theory then you obviously need a proper accounting system for its relevant categories and to show results in a statitical fashion. The basic point remains that in order to develop the proper accounting system, the notion of productive/unproductive labor is the crucial starting point.
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