[lbo-talk] the price of everything and the value of nothing

[Mike Ballard]

No one ever claimed there was a rational core to the neo-Ricardian
project, just a series of just so models with a hodgepodge of eclectic
assumptions tailored to the minor object of inquiry depending upon the
interests of the researcher.  Don't like this model grab another one. 
Need a theory of the vertically integrated firm; grab Coase's ad hoc
theory.  Need a theory of profit; practice abstinence or latch on to
Nitzan's.  Does it matter if taken together none of it sums to 
an internally consistent whole? No!  The only ones who have to meet 
these rigid standards of internal consistency are apparently the least 
scientific amongst us - the Marxists.  And when we demonstrate time and
again a coherent transformation of values into prices via a number of
well specified protocols you dismiss it out-of-hand as unconvincing and
tautological. Displaying the exact same arrogance of the neoclassicals
that fuelled the fury of the neo-Ricardians in the first place.  What a
pity you have become the attack dogs you once sought to heel.

*****************
This excellent bit of invective by Travis reminded me of another,
written some years earlier:

What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual
production changes its character in proportion as material production
is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of
its ruling class.

When people speak of the ideas that revolutionise society, they do but
express that fact that within the old society the elements of a new one
have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even
pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.

Thanks mate,
Mike B)

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Live in harmony with the Earth.  Abolish the wages system.
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