[p2p-research] Can Marxian Economics Explain the Crisis?

[Ryan Lanham]

Marx's sociology--the class struggle, is an interesting historical insight.
As an economist, the standard wrap, which I agree with, is that there are no
falsifiable claims made.  In the end, it became religion or political
ideal...a hope or rallying point.  Nothing wrong with that, just not
economic theory and maybe that is a so what critique.

What someone might need to do is to take Marx into a set of assertions and
systematically test them in such a way that they can be shown to be usually
right or usually wrong.  I personally don't think such a task is feasible
given the way Marx presented his work.  But I am no expert.  Personally, as
I have said, I think little of the 18th century or 19th century is
relevant...particularly after Keynes General Theory which crushed classical
economics--the basis of Marxism as much as neoliberalism.  But that is
perhaps my own religion.  It is a demonstrable theory however that can be
relatively easily tested for truth or falsehood by anyone who believes or
doesn't believe it.

Ryan

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 1:29 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> hi kevin,
>
> have you followed brenner/aglietta, I find them very fruitful, without the
> need to fully agree,
>
> unlike Ryan, though I'm critical of the marxist legacy, I still think it is
> vastly superior, because of its attention to the underlying class dynamics,
> than any other relative approach,
>
> it's practically impossible to understand any country's evolution and
> politics, without this attention; where marxism would become 'dangerous', is
> by applying these insights in a monological way; by contrast, an integral
> approach combing the fullness of (inter)objective and (inter)subjective
> factors, would avoid any determinist tendency
>
> Michel
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 12:03 PM, Kevin Carson <
> free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 1/7/10, Ryan <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > John Quiggin wonders if anyone has constructed "a distinctively Marxian
>> analysis of the current  crisis":
>> >   Marxian economics MIA?, by John Quiggin: The financial crisis has,
>>  justifiably, enhanced the reputation of Karl Marx as an economic thinker.
>> Marx  was the first economist to treat crises and panics as an inherent
>> feature of  capitalism rather than as an inexplicable, but fortunately
>> temporary, departures  from a natural equilibrium.
>> >  Unfortunately, most of his analytical effort, and even more, that of
>> the school  of thought that followed him, was devoted to pointless exercises
>> in value  theory[1]. Marx’s discussion of crisis rested mainly on the idea
>> of the falling  rate of profit which seemed at the time to be both a
>> theoretical inevitability  and an observable trend. But with technological
>> progress, there’s no necessity  for the rate of profit to fall consistently,
>> and it hasn’t. There are other  ideas in Marx that might be developed to
>> yield a better theory of crisis, but  nothing resembling a systematic
>> theory.
>> >
>>
>> Marx himself, in vol. 3 of Capital, wrote of a number of offsetting
>> tendencies to the falling direct rate of profit, which were developed
>> by twentieth century Marxists (including the export of surplus
>> capital, in assorted theories of imperialism by Lenin, Kautsky,
>> Luxemburg, etc.).
>>
>> IMO the most relevant Marxist work to the present crisis is that of
>> the neo-Marxists in the Monthly Review group, starting with Baran and
>> Sweezy's dissection of corporate capitalism's tendency toward
>> overaccumulation in Monopoly Capitalism.  More recently, Harry Magdoff
>> did some great work on financialization as a remedy for growing
>> surpluses, tendencies to jobless recoveries, etc., over the past
>> twenty years or so.
>>
>> --
>> Kevin Carson
>> Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
>> Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
>> http://mutualist.blogspot.com
>> Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
>> http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
>> Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
>> http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
>>
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Ryan Lanham
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