FROP etc

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sat Feb 19 00:16:22 PST 2000


Fabian Balardini wrote:


>The current debate on the FROP is published in the latest issue of
>the journal "Research in Political Economy No.17" and taking place
>between D. Laibman and D. Foley supporting the Okishio theorem and
>A. Kliman and A. Freeman supporting Marx's notion of the FROP (you
>can also look at the archive of OPE-l where the same debate has been
>going on for about 4 years).
>The interesting insight lurking on the background of this new (and
>maybe final) chapter on this debate is again the issue of
>methodology regarding the interpretation of Marx's theory this time
>his theory of value(I say "this time" because in the 80's the same
>debate gravitated around the methodological point regarding
>competition with Shaikh arguing that you can only obtain Okishian
>results if you interpret Marx's FROP within a perfect competition
>framework). This time around Kliman and Freeman (as well as other
>authors who identify themselves with the Temporal Single Sytem (TSS)
>interpretation of Marx's theory) suggest that supporters of the
>Okishio theorem obtain the result of an increasing rate of profit
>due to technical change because this follows from their own
>methodological assumptions regarding the notion of value in Marx.
>This particular methodology leading to an increasing rate of profit
>is identified by the (TSS) authors as being the same method used by
>orthodox e!
>conomists

That like E! TV?

After reading something like this, I've got to ask - so what? What in god's name does this matter for understanding or for politics? Why should I or anyone outside the circle of 40 or so OPE-Lers care?

Doug



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