CB:Marx's
> emphasis on human labor
> tends to empower the working class with a sense that
> workers are producing
> the wealth and are thereby justified in taking state
> power as a class.
Andie: Well, that's one on theory of justice -- not Marx's, because he doesn't havea theory of justice. Therea re other ways to argue the point, and other raesons to make labor crucial. For example, while you can have a corn theory of value if you want and measure vakliue in terms of SNACT (ther amount of time socially necessary to produce a given quantity of corn), labor si more salient because it is conscious and can resist.
^^^^^ CB: I'm saying here that Marx had a rhetorical and propagandistic use for justice. That there are other ways to argue the point is not to the "point" here. Labor theory of value tends to help rev up the rev. It is more likely to be effective in inspiring people to take action in their interests than a corn theory of value.
Again, that logically a corn theory of value might be similar is a scholastic point, not a praxis point.
Attention to "explanation or clarification" or to "corn theory" as logically equivalent to ltv, and forgetfulness about how the theory impacts practice, suggests a more scholastic than praxistic attitude.
>
> How do your alternative tautologies enhance social
> practice, praxis ?
Well, I am an antitrust lawyer, so neoclassical price theory is very useful in my line of work, which involves getting markets to work. This has an ethical dimension: antitrust violations are large scale highway robbery.
^^^^ CB: I'm thinking more of radical political practice.
Aren't trusts mostly capitalists robbing capitalists ?
^^^
Hayalian models are useful if you want to understand the problems with not-marker allocations of resources. This is true even if you think that markets should be abolished. It is especially true if you think markers should be abolsihed. Hayekian analyis shows you the problesm to be overcome.
^^^^^^^^^
CB: Perhaps _some_ of the problems to be overcome. That theoretical analysis must be complemented with conclusions drawn from _practice_ , as with the Soviet Union.
^^^^^^^
Transaction cost analysis (Williamson, Coase et al.) is useful all over.
Marxist analysis is not useful for either of those purposes. Marxist theory does predict the rise of monopolies, but not their behavior.
^^^^^ CB: Marxist analysis from the Soviet Union is useful in considering how to do central planning and other planning. It has the added advantage that it is based on real experience as opposed to thought experiment.
Anti-trust analysis, how is that useful to the working class' winning the class struggle ?
^^^^^^
Oskar Lange once said: Marxist economics is the economics of capitalsim. Neoclassical economics is the economics of socialism. That is an oversimplification -- NCE and other bourgeois economics are useful, even for progressive purposes, in capitalism. And there is more than NCE that will be useful in socialism. But Marxist economics won't be useful in socialism -- unless it's a market socialism like the one I advocate.
jks
^^^^^ CB: Marxist political economy as developed by Marx has utility for socialism in the general sense of projecting the need for ending the anarchy of production, instituting planning, and other principles Marx and Engels suggested ( from each , to each etc.)
The Soviet Marxist political economists did a lot of work on developing the theory of political economy of socialism. See Nitikin _Fundamentals of Political Economy_ with several chapters on Socialists economy, for example.
The literature of other Communist Parties and non-party Marxists has much Marxist analysis of socialist political economy.
So, Marxism does have a rather developed economic analysis of socialism. The literature of other Communist Parties has