On Feb 1, 2009, at 4:29 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> Eric Beck wrote:
>>
>>> What I see is enormous
>>> pressure on corps from shareholders to shovel big loads of cash
>>> into their
>>> pockets rather than invest it in the business. That's a battle
>>> within the
>>> capitalist class that doesn't fit into any standard Marxist models,
>
> There is no such thing as a "standard Marxist model" because there
> is no
> such thing as Models in Marxist theory.
Actually I wrote that, not Eric.
What are the standard reproduction schemas of Capital vol. 2 if not models? What are all the notions of rising OCC and FROP if not models? What is the Shaikh/Tonak recasting of the NIPAs if not models? So what the hell are you talking about?
And in most Marxist thinking, finance is derivative, secondary, epiphenomenal. E.g., Shaikh, who explains stock market movements by the alleged rate of profit on new investment, a quantity no one can really observe, and no portfolio manager ever thinks about? But it has to be this way, since the financial sector can never originate, only reflect.
Doug