>Doug. I am surprised by your claim that you don't see anything Marxian
>categories can tell you about capitalism, that you can't devine equally as
>well using bourgeois stats. Particularly since, in the short time I have
>been reading this list, a number of posts have used the categories in their
>analysis in ways that are clearly distinct from the kind of analysis that
>can be done using bourgeios stats and categories. In any case, in this
>state of puzzlement, I will try to sketch out for your perusal some of the
>ways they differ.
Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I find the basic Marxian categories, like the ones you name in the rest of your post, profoundly useful and true - but mainly as political categories. What I don't understand is the usefulness of a Shaikh/Tonak kind of exercise - I felt no wiser after having read their book than before starting it. I don't thinks it takes a labor of 20 years recasting the U.S. national income and product accounts - or that of graduate students recasting the Greek and Turkish NIPAs - to understand that capitalism is a system of exploitation, that the rate of profit is the motor of the system, that the origins of interest are in SV, etc. etc. I know this from having read Marx, and I'm reminded of it by reading the stats and the newspapers every day.
Doug