The crisis of bourgeois economics

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blindpig
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Re: The crisis of bourgeois economics

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 04, 2020 3:28 pm

anaxarchos
08-09-2009, 11:21 AM

There is quite a bit of fodder for you. Harman does an excellent job of returning numerous marginal utility types and others back to the first 90 pages of Capital. It is not always clear where people like Marshall are coming from. In fact, they are merely "reconciling" exchange value with use value. Nothing else is really possible. Either it must be reconciled or the whole "thesis" is ejected into the air no matter how many times one repeats that the "natural basis of prices" is irrelevent.

When I was in school, Ricardo was buried for the second time. Joan Robinson had led the first raising from the dead because she was smarter than Keynes about real life. She was helped by people like Piero Sraffa who had been Marxists once, stopped, but remembered the centrality of LTV. By the 1950s, Ricardo was dead again... only to have the old manuscripts reborn in the Cambridge debate of the 1960s. The debate was "declared" in favor of the neoclassicals but the silliness of the Samuelson "victory" was what led to the third revival with people like Krugman. In many ways, it is just ridiculous. They can't live with Ricardo, and they can't live without him... and the smarter ones know that if Ricardo is seated at the table, the Old Man will soon be knocking on the door.

Everything else follows from the first 90 pages of Capital.
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Re: The crisis of bourgeois economics

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 04, 2020 3:29 pm

anaxarchos
08-09-2009, 11:24 AM

Not a single example would remain the same today.. but not a single retrospective judgement would be changed. They would all be strenthened. This piece is required reading.
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Re: The crisis of bourgeois economics

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 04, 2020 3:29 pm

anaxarchos
08-09-2009, 11:29 AM

Somewhat remiscent of the Silicon valley "new ideas" gurus like Eric Schmidt. Once such geniuses tell the truth, everyone will line up to do as they say... for how can people miss the truthiness of it all?

"We will eliminate half of Capitalism so that the other half can live..."
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Re: The crisis of bourgeois economics

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 04, 2020 3:30 pm

Kid of the Black Hole
08-09-2009, 02:01 PM

I know its like asking How does Santa's magic sleigh fly? but about Marginalism. Harmon placed the idea of diminishing returns -- ie that the NEXT product produced always carries greater and greater disutility than the last -- as the rationalization for supply and demand curves being complements of each other and having a unique intersection

I understand the theory and the "logic" but was not aware this was such a fundamental proposition within Marginalism. I know it is supposed to be because the utility of one thing wanes as you reach a (near) saturation which de facto raises the utility of everything else. But that is from the consumers standpoint not that of industry.

So maybe I don't understand it at all, I don't know.

Also, I thought that at some points he should have been a little more concerned with hand-holding when providing "lay" explanations. For instance, why can more output be produced and clear only if wages go down in Marginalist theory? I get that its because they say all wealth is distributed either as profits or wages and greater output is driven by greater investment is driven by greater profits which comes at the expense of wages.

But still, on the surface that is a real headscratcher -- you sell more shit by paying people less money to buy that shit?..and actually, Harmon doesn't take a moment in that section to remind us that it is debunked nonsense in the first place.

Also, I assume that when you said earlier that Harmon focuses on "archaic" (I forget the word you used) issues, you mean his contrast of savings vs investment rates. I just took that as simply more of a period history lesson.

I am re-reading this piece because while the scope of it "feels" vast, I think Harmon is only working one or two themes and he is exceptional at connecting the dots but without explicitly saying: I have connected these dots.
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Re: The crisis of bourgeois economics

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 04, 2020 3:31 pm

anaxarchos
08-09-2009, 04:08 PM

Your "How does Santa's magic sleigh fly?" question is the correct one. There is no such thing as "Marginalism", per se. There is an assumption that it must exist (for explicitly political reasons - read Bentham/Mill). Within that "broadly shared assumption, there is no uniformity whatever. Jevons is so thin that utility comes down to scarcity which brings you right back to LTV. Walras/Pareto use the actual movement of prices to quantify MU post-festum, and then use that as the basis of simulation (with the inevitable criticism that all they have done is to demonstrate the historical movement of prices without regard to MU - i.e. without any understanding of the continuous changes in the economy over time). The "Psychological" guys (i.e. "Austrians", i.e. Libertarians) reject such a possibility out of hand while embracing Walras (how?), with Mises essentially insisting that utility is unquantifiable (and thus is an article of "faith").

Each argument, then, is specific to the theorist: "We all know that Santa's sleigh flies, so one way that could happen is if Santa had a an under-carriage of farting gnats and..." You have to know Harman's specific reference to explore the question in detail but the generic answer is that price of labor is also subject to the same MU (because each seller is also a buyer, yadda, yadda). The capitalist is also a "consumer" - nay, the most important of "consumers".
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Re: The crisis of bourgeois economics

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 04, 2020 3:32 pm

Two Americas
08-09-2009, 06:48 PM

I should probably actually read the full essay before I start commenting.
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Re: The crisis of bourgeois economics

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 04, 2020 3:33 pm

Two Americas
08-10-2009, 10:49 AM

('Radical' Keynesianism) was "stranded, like Keynes, between radical talk on the one hand and recognition of the limits of what is acceptable to those who run the system on the other."

Is that not the same predicament of Democrats, liberals and progressives? Are not people arguing for "recognition of the limits of what is acceptable to those who run the system" to be the overruling and determining factor is all of our political thinking?

We even have self-described socialists who are arguing that we must take into consideration at all times "what is acceptable to those who run the system" and saying that anything outside of the limits of what is acceptable to those who run the system should be seen as unacceptable by us.

Radical talk on the one hand, and staying within the boundaries of what would be acceptable to the rulers on the other - that is what all of the "work within the system" and "practicality" and "being realistic" and "incremental progress" arguments are about.

The question we should be asking people is this - "are you saying that we must stay within the limits of what is acceptable to the those who run the system?"
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Re: The crisis of bourgeois economics

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 04, 2020 3:33 pm

PinkoCommie
08-10-2009, 11:25 AM
As noted here already...

CPUSA Chair Sam Webb is living in denial when he criticized progressives for our failure to, in Webb's words, to "factor in the whole array of forces and conditions that weigh on (Obama's) decision making process and performance before issuing a report card."

There is plenty of evidence indicating the Obama Administration is heading the way of the triangulating Clinton Administration. Progressives have plenty of reason to become alarmed at recent trends in which "Change You Can Believe In" has been replaced by "More of the Same." During this summer we saw the Obama Administration give a wink-and-a-nod to School of Americas graduates to overthrow the democratically elected president of Honduras, increase its sabre rattling against the Bolivarian Revolution, continue the Bush policy of spying on peace groups, freeze Single Payer advocates from the national health care debate, surrender on Card Check without firing a shot, and refusing to prosecute the law breakers from the Bush Administration. There are many other examples, such as Obama's refusal to even issue a Stop Loss executive order to prevent the discharge of gay and lesbian servicemembers, and an increase in bellicosity in Latin America, Afghanistan, and Africa.

At what point are we to "fully put the pedal to the metal," using Webb's own verbiage? Should we wait until the Obama Administration puts Ecuador, Venezuela, and Bolivia on the State Department's terrorism list, as Cuba currently is? Shall we await to hear the sound of American bombs exploding over Caracas? Should we bite our collective tongues until the number of casualties in Afghanistan exceed the ones in Iraq?

From 2001 to 2004 we heard and read in the blogs an endless litany of excuses for the Democrats failure to oppose the abuses of power and war crimes of the Bush/Cheney regime. We were constantly lectured that we should "keep the powder dry" until such time as the "wiser" Beltway establishment decided that enough was enough. We know how well that went! There was a word that fully described what the Democrats did in response to the crimes of the Bush Administration: appeasement.

What will be the next criticism that will be hurled in our direction? That American imperialism doesn't exist in the current condition? That we are being alarmist? That we must "make capitalism work for everyone," as Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales first proposed in 2004? Rajan and Zingales proposal included curbing the powers of domestic lobbies (environmentalists and unions), opening borders to unrestricted flow of goods and capital (let the transnationals pillage to their hearts contend), transferring assets to "efficient" owners (more privatization), and creating a new safety net (private social security accounts). Sounds familiar? - IndianaGreen
http://www.progressiveindependent.com/d ... sg_id=6182
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Re: The crisis of bourgeois economics

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 04, 2020 3:34 pm

Two Americas
08-10-2009, 11:59 AM

It would not be such a problem if people were honest and would preface all of their political remarks with "given that we can only consider ideas that will please and be acceptable to the wealthy and powerful few..." But then all of the arguments against the Left would collapse, wouldn't they?

It is as though a criminal gang were terrorizing a town, and we had a group of people who - while they cannot refute the evidence that the criminal gang is the source of the various problems in the town - stubbornly insists that any solution we propose meet with the approval of the gangsters themselves, and then get very angry when that contradiction is pointed out.
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Re: The crisis of bourgeois economics

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 04, 2020 3:35 pm

meganmonkey
08-10-2009, 12:00 PM

"We even have self-described socialists who are arguing that we must take into consideration at all times "what is acceptable to those who run the system" and saying that anything outside of the limits of what is acceptable to those who run the system should be seen as unacceptable by us."


Indeed, I wasted much of my lunch hour skimming [link:www.bestcyrano.org/filesdepot/?p=1432:|this horribly wishy washy article by self-proclaimed socialist Barbara Epstein] who suggests:


2) Left organizations should uphold a set of principles that might be described as socialist-humanist (with the meaning of “humanism” expanded to include other living creatures and the environment). We should avoid focusing on the socialist component of this diad in a way that would narrow or marginalize the left.

3) We should judge our political positions against our core principles: social equality, substantive, participatory democracy, anti-militarism, human and animal rights, environmental balance and sustainability. We should reject positions that conflict with these principles, or with evidence, logic and common sense. Any position that would be laughed at by anyone other than a confirmed leftist should at least be reconsidered.

:wtf: :wtf: :wtf:

That IS what so many are saying, Mike, and it's so ridiculous. How the fuck can you challenge the status quo without...uh...challenging the status quo? It's the weakest shit.

If there IS a left of any kind right now it's too busy eating it's own ass*** to get anything done.

***I don't know what that means either. Sorry :)
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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