N&B claim that many concepts that political economists take for granted are meaningless without their value theories. Then, they argue that the prevailing value theories are both epistemologically flawed and, more seriously, ontologically impossible. The response have largely taken two prongs - mere dismissal notwithstanding. One of the responses is that Marx (or Marxists) either do not have or do not need a labour theory of value.
If that is so, what is the meaning of 'accumulation'? What precisely is 'accumulated'? How is it to be measured? What is the meaning of production? How do we measure productivity? How do we identify productive and/or unproductive labour? What is the relationship between production and financial values? What is capital?
On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 12:35 PM, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net>wrote:
> At 09:24 AM 11/5/2010, D. T. Cochrane wrote:
>
>
> Damned if they do - everyone else is already saying this, so why does it
>> need to be said - damned if they don't - no one else is saying this, so it
>> obviously isn't important.
>>
>
>
> Please. When I asked "this is news" I was referring to you're saying that
> accumulation
>
>
>
> cannot be explained by any one
>> >set of institutions that can be described as the 'economy,' but instead
>> >depend on a vast, diverse array of social relations that transcend any
>> >analytical division between 'economy' and 'politics.'
>>
>
>
> Then you asked who else is writing about the "differential conception of
> accumulation" and I said no one I can think of.
>
> Like Mike said yesterday, you should expect this kind of reaction when you
> announce you've come up with a new school. And that's the way it's being
> touted. Like this quote:
>
> Capital as Power Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism
>
> by Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan / May 6th, 2010
>
> [...]
>
> "As younger researchers socialized in a different world, we didn't carry
> the same theoretical baggage. Uninhibited, we applied the Cartesian
> Ctrl-Alt-Del and started by assuming that there is no bifurcation to begin
> with and therefore no real-financial interaction to explain. All capital is
> finance and only finance, and it exists as finance because accumulation
> represents not the material amalgamation of utility or labor, but the
> creordering of power."
>
> [...]
>
> Bleah
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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