In commenting on a post, Marcel Proust [if only!] offers
this observation:
“It has been roughly a quarter century since I last spent
time thinking about Sraffa, but IIRC he demonstrated that one could speak
equally well about the exploitation of any input to production, not just labor.
My recollection is that he used the example of iron and showed how iron could
be considered exploited. Again, IIRC, this was based on substituting an iron
theory of value rather than a labor theory of value, the former as valid as the
latter mathematically. Whatever good was used as the basis of value (labor or
iron) would invariably be "exploited."”
Well, it was not Piero Sraffa who demonstrated that. It was I!
Or more precisely, I proved it, unaware that a few years earlier, Josep
Vegara, a Spanish economist, had also proved it. My proof appeared in an essay entitled “A Critique and Reinterpretation of Marx’s Labor
Theory of Value,” published in the Spring 1981 issue of the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs. In a comment on my essay, the brilliant
Marxist mathematical economist John Roemer noted that Vegara had proved the same
theorem in his 1979 book Economia
Politica y Modeles Multisectoriales [see pp. 56-7 of that work, for those
interested.]
In my essay, I attempted an alternative mathematical
analysis of Marx’s [correct] claim that capitalism rests on the exploitation of
the working class. I was hopeful that
Marxists mathematically abler than I would develop my ideas, but that has not
happened, to the best of my knowledge.
I realize there is something pathetic about an eighty-five
year old man tugging at people’s coat sleeves and saying, plaintively, “I did
that, I did that, I really did that,” but inasmuch as this is the only thing I
have ever proved in my entire life, I was seriously bummed by Roemer’s news.
4 comments:
If you proved the theory on your own, why should you be bummed if someone had proved it previously without your knowledge? You have all the right in the world to be proud of proving it since there was no plagiarism involved.
The original of this comment has not appeared more than an hour later, so I am trying a second time.
My apologies for the incorrect citation. Sraffa's PCbMC was published in 1960 and was written over (about) 3 decades. Your work (and Vegara's) appeared aobut 20 years later. How is it that "it was not Piero Sraffa who demonstrated that"? Have I incorrectly remembered a main result of his analysis?
In related news, when I took and taught the history of economic thought, I found your 2 books on Marx very helpful. Understanding Marx was a very clear and concise explanation of when the LTV was mathematically coherent (almost never) and when it was not (almost everywhere, as measure theorists are fond of saying). Moneybags was a wonderful and (IMHO) brilliant exposition of what Keynes described in a similar context: "The composition of this book has been for the author a long struggle of escape, and so must the reading of it be for most readers if the author's assault upon them is to be successful, a struggle of escape from habitual modes of thought and expression."
I remember a promise (in one of the introductions?) of a 3rd book on Marx, covering his philosophy. I was never able to find it back when I was thinking about such things. Did you ever get around to writing it? What is it called?
I am delighted that you found my two books helpful. That is very gratifying. I am afraid you have misremembered. Sraffa did not prove the theorem that Vegara and then I proved [it is not clear to me that he would have been interested to do so, but I am absolutely certain that had he cared, he would have come up with the proof in a heartbeat.]
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