>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.
Previously you said Marxian categories were primarily political rather than technical. You repeat the first part again here. Political? What do you mean? Useful to create some polemic? Not technical? You mean unimportant to creating an analysis of capitalism? Surely not that. But then what do you mean?
You said you could track profit rates over several decades--they go up here, down over there, back up again over here--and create an important *political* explanation (there's that characterization again) of capitalist development. And presumably have something important to say about capitalist dynamics, as well as the contradictions facing capital. I said you were kidding yourself on several levels, the most basic being that published profit rates do not help you understand profitability (the creation and distribution of surplus value), or the contradictions inherent in the different ways surplus value is realized today. Given your assertions, I expected a strong challenge to my remarks (including all of my characterizations of published neoclassical categories, and the contrasts I drew of the uses of marxian vs. published categories). You said nothing.
Instead you merely repeat that you don't understand the analytical usefulness of Marxian 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.
I responded to your posts because you asked important questions, and claimed you were eager for answers. You asked "what do Marxian categories tell you that the intelligent use of bourgeious statistics can't?" Similarly: "I'm asking what they explain about capitalism that I don't know already?" More particularly, "what's the point of productive labor" as a category? You opined that use of Marxian categories seemed like a scholastic exercise to you, "but I'm willing, even eager, to be proven wrong, so please convince me otherwise."
I tried to answer each of your questions, asserting that the two systems at issue were capable of vastly different uses, and the Marxian ones are far superior in many ways. I tried to show the basic worthlessness of published data on profits, interest payments, and employee compensation to any understanding of capitalist dynamics. I tried to sketch how the Marxian categories help you to understand the laws of motion, which, of course is what they are designed to do (published categories--in this case those that comprise the NIPA--are simply government compilations of business records).
On small case in point. You have asserted that you understand that profits and interest payments are divisions of surplus value, as if, I suppose, that were indicative of some kind of Marxian awareness. That doesn't even get you to first base in understanding the uses of surplus value today.
I took some space to show how a grasp of the concept of productive labor was essential to understanding not only the origins of surplus value and exploitation, but the laws of motion as well. A couple of days ago, in responding to Rob, I went into some detail to show how there are different definitions of productive labor (all springing from a few basics) depending on the questions being analyzed (that was, I think, actually before you asked what the hell the term meant). Did any of this mean anything to you?
I (gently) suggested that your claim that you understand systemic capitalist exploitation, but don't understand the analytical uses of Marxian categories, (1) is illogical (the two things are not separable in any way that makes sense), and (2) perhaps indicates you don't understand the difference between the Marxian and bourgeois views of exploitation. I asked what was the basis for your views of exploitation. You simply repeated that you understood it.
I know you are a busy guy. But your reply to me was devoid of content.