-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [lbo-talk] : BDL on Sweezy) Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2004 14:35:50 -0800 (PST) From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Brad said that Sweezey's favorable citation of Stalin speaks for itself, and it is how he would like Sweezey to be remembered. The suggestions seems to be that the most important thing about Sweezey as either a political figure or an economist is that he at least once agreed with Stalin. If as a political figure, it is unclear how this is relevant to Sweezey as an economist. A number of well regarded economists of the Cambridge school were actually Stalinists, including Dobbs and I think Meek. I have anecdotal evidence that Sraffa, whose technical competence was formidable, was a Stalinist in politics. Lots of folks were soft on Stalin and nonetheless did good work. Do you disagree, Brad.
Politically, of course, Sweezey was actually an important figure in the history of academic freedom and free speech in general, as well as being a founder of Monthly Review, a national treasure and hardly a mere Stalinist broadsheet.
If the point concerns Sweezey as an economist, I would like Brad to make clear to me what I do not understand, why the citation in the article is the most remarkable thing about Sweezey's career as an economist. What about his reconstruction of the argument of Marx's capital in The Theory Of Capitalist development, and his proof, for what it is worth, that the transformation problem is soluble (And I don't even believe in the LTV.) Yeah, I know Borkewiesz came up with it first. S credits him. What about his groundbreaking work with Paul Baran in development theory? And, if we are looking to the tip of the hat to Stalin, given the premises of value theory, what is the emembarrassment in saying that the LoV will continue to operate in the USSR.
With all due respect -- Brad, this is an olive branch, I'm trying to be civil, and I acknowledge with regret that I have fallen short in that department in dealing with you in the past. Please accept my apologies.
jks
> Let us not forget that Brad D's original statement
> commits tu quoque fallacy
> with respect to Stalin , as Michael Perelman alluded
> to. Being a mass
> murderer is irrelevant to the validity of Stalin's
> opinion on the continued
> operation of the law of value within part of the
> Soviet Union. Then , I
> think, there is a second layer of ad hominem in what
> Brad says, because he
> accuses Sweezey of bad motive in agreeing with
> Stalin. Not that Sweezey has
> made a bad argument, but that he agrees with someone
> bad. So, Brad D.'s
> argument is doubly flawed, since we are talking
> logic.
>