[lbo-talk] An Orgy of Speculation?

[Carrol Cox]

I missed this. The 'problem' is that there is no such thing as "the standard
Marxist theory" of anything. Secondly, Volume 3, in which this alleged
"theory" is expressed was the _earliest_ part of Capital to be written, and
that early draft was never revised as were the drafts of Vols. 1 & 2. And
finally, there is a major debate among Marxists as to whether Marx himself
had any economic "theory" whatever. As Moishe Postone puts it, Marx wrote a
_Critique_ of Political Economy, and that is not the same thing at all as a
_Critical_ Political Economy. So if you want to argue with the alleged
Theory of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall, you had better find
some "Marxist" other than Marx to argue with.

Carrol

Dissenting Wren: 

The standard Marxist theory of the falling rate of profit rests on the
notion that there is an upper bound to the rate of exploitation. That
bound is both political and physical, political because the capitalist
mode of production unintentionally increases the potential political
power of workers, and physical because exploitation of the workforce
must, in the long run, be conducted at a level that permits the
reproduction of the working class. (OK, that last is quasi-physical
since, as Marx notes, the level of consumption required for
reproduction varies from place to place, but capitalism raises this
level of consumption needed for reproduction, thereby making the
quasi-physical limit more stringent, not less). In mainstream
economics, these kind of limits get taken up in discussions of the
efficiency wage.

The problem with Marx's argument is the assumption that investment in
constant capital only reproduces value, which is doubly nonsense,
partly due to the incoherence of the notion of value...
^^^^^^^
CB: If the notion of value is incoherent, how are you defining
"exploitation" and "rate of exploitation in your previous paragraph ?

^^^^^
[NB - I won't respond to any of the objections this may elicit]

^^^^
CB: giggles
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