Shouldn't you try and understand it before you try and fix it? You should also know who has tried to fix it before and what missteps they took.

Anyway, if you want a good book explaining where Marxist economic analysis falls down, pick up a copy of Cyber Marx . . . or just read it on-line here.

chegitz guevara wrote:
Shouldn't you try and understand it before you try and fix it? You should also know who has tried to fix it before and what missteps they took.

Anyway, if you want a good book explaining where Marxist economic analysis falls down, pick up a copy of Cyber Marx . . . or just read it on-line here.

Hmm... this looks like it came from the university in my city. Cool.

-Martin

digi wrote:
ok
marginalism?

how does labor theory not work ?

does das kapital need editing?

I can't really understand what he's saying. He should speak more clearly. But somehow I doubt this guy really read all three volumes of capital.

Marginalism? Yes, it is indeed marginal!
For over a hundred years, mainstream economists have argued that Marx's labour theory of value cannot handle the relation between value and price, and that Marx's theory is 'internally contradictory' on this basis. However, I've been reading Andrew Kliman's latest book "Reclaiming Marx's 'Capital': A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency" which once and for all refutes these crass claims.
Check out Kliman! It's not an easy read, but I think that it constitues a tremendously powerful refutation of all those smart ass economist dude arguments that 'Marx is inconsistent', and therefore not worth studying. It is marginalism that is based on dud assumptions and presuppositions according to Kliman.
Glenn

Thanks for the book recommendation Glenn, looks good!

Glenn Rikowski wrote:
Marginalism? Yes, it is indeed marginal!
For over a hundred years, mainstream economists have argued that Marx's labour theory of value cannot handle the relation between value and price, and that Marx's theory is 'internally contradictory' on this basis. However, I've been reading Andrew Kliman's latest book "Reclaiming Marx's 'Capital': A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency" which once and for all refutes these crass claims.
Check out Kliman! It's not an easy read, but I think that it constitues a tremendously powerful refutation of all those smart ass economist dude arguments that 'Marx is inconsistent', and therefore not worth studying. It is marginalism that is based on dud assumptions and presuppositions according to Kliman.
Glenn

Do they not have a point though? What about an example that Marx himself brings up in Capital, the example of uncultivated land? It clearly has price but according to the LTV it has no value. It can be exchanged for commodities yet isn't one.

-Martin

Uncultivated land is Capital, the same way a factory, a forest, an un-tapped mineral deposit are Capital. It is a tool used in conjunction with labor to create commodities. The land is being bought for use, to have labor added to it later on in order to create cultivated land, a factory site, a private estate...etc...etc...

I suppose this means that these things have value relative to their future or prospective use.

One thing that confounds me about marginalism, what the hell are the units on a marginal utility curve? What do you measure utility in, that is what does a unit of utility represent? And how do you objectively compute value without knowing the units? Talk about a calculation problem.

You can't. It is based on logic, not math.

Marginal Utility Curve is an unnecessarily vague way of saying: There can be too much of something.


I order a hamburger, this has a certain "utility" as food. I eat it, I order another one, it has the same utility....I do this again and again and as I do I begin to get full. Each burger I buy becomes less and less useful until I am too full to eat or to do so would sicken me or otherwise cause me harm.

You could try to calculate the number of hamburgers it takes until I am full/sick but it's pointless because this changes all the time within me (because stomachs actually stretch and expand) and within people.

This goes with everything we buy, you can only buy so many microwaves before they start getting useless or harmful (if you have so many that your house is filled and there is a chance you will be crushed by them all).


Economics these days is just a bunch of guys gathering around and trying to shove non-mathematical principles into mathematical formulas and then masking this with arcane/ counter-intuitive names.

chegitz guevara wrote:
Shouldn't you try and understand it before you try and fix it? You should also know who has tried to fix it before and what missteps they took.

Anyway, if you want a good book explaining where Marxist economic analysis falls down, pick up a copy of Cyber Marx . . . or just read it on-line here.

Looks like an interesting read, Chegitz. I'll put it on my reading queue. Thank you.

Jean Luc' Pierre Defruu wrote:
Uncultivated land is Capital, the same way a factory, a forest, an un-tapped mineral deposit are Capital. It is a tool used in conjunction with labor to create commodities. The land is being bought for use, to have labor added to it later on in order to create cultivated land, a factory site, a private estate...etc...etc...

I suppose this means that these things have value relative to their future or prospective use.

But according to Marx, things are only able to be bought and sold because they are the physical embodiments of undifferentiated human labour. Commodities, in the abstract, are exchanged for other commodities.

What then of uncultivated land that embodies no labour, yet is still directly exchangeable? Future use only accounts for the use value of an object; that is to say a commodity will be exchanged because it has use value, and it can be exchanged because it has exchange value. Uncultivated land should, by the Marxist definition, have no exchange value.

-Martin

That is why I said it is considered "Capital" not a commodity.

Let me make myself clearer: Capital can be exchanged for other forms of Capital. In this case money-capital is being exchanged for land-capital. They are not being used as commodities, commodities are used to be consumed not to be used to create other commodities (this is stated quite clearly in Das Kapital, several times.)

Jean Luc' Pierre Defruu wrote:
Let me make myself clearer: Capital can be exchanged for other forms of Capital. In this case money-capital is being exchanged for land-capital. They are not being used as commodities, commodities are used to be consumed not to be used to create other commodities (this is stated quite clearly in Das Kapital, several times.)

Ah, ok. Cool. That answers my question pretty well. I'm only on chapter 3 so far.

-Martin

No problemo.....I am abit rusty. It has been quite some time since I last read the Volumes. I really aught to brush up. I usually don't see many people actually arguing these sort of things and then all of a sudden people are taking an active interest in the theory.

Awfully strange but I'm not complaining one bit.