M-TH: Re Sayer, Rubin and Mattick

[Chris Burford]

Hi Rakesh,

I think the quote from Mattick does indeed help understand
your proposition as far as it relates to him.


[ D Sayer, like II Rubin before him, *seems* to understand
the law of value as an equilibriating mechanism, a mistake exposed in
Mattick's *Marxism: the last refuge of the bourgeoisie*]



Unless anyone steps in to defend Sayer or Rubin on 
this particular point, it would seem to be a 
distinction worth bearing in mind.

I am not quite sure what I might be "buying" 
in view of the controversial
title of Mattick's book, the passage quoted 
stands to some extent in it own right and looks 
"right" to me. Interestingly
it appears to converge with the economic approaches
that now emphasise non-equilibrium approaches.

While I am daunted by their mathematics, what appears
intuitively plausible to me, coming as I do from
the applied life sciences, is the sense of an
economy being a living system, whose movement and 
contradictions are made up of teaming countervailing
tendencies, which are never at rest.

Concerning language, despite your generosity, I do 
not think it necessarily is you. I just feel on 
uncertain ground with sociological approaches
which do not feel as related to psychogy or to 
market processes, and are particularly vulnerable to 
abstractions that cut loose from ultimate concrete
reality. But if we are to work on these issues
which, I agree sometimes involve some very
fine distinctions and patient mental labour,
then we have to be prepared to come to it from
different sides and tolerate some vagueness and 
problems in mutual comprehension.


In another post I will try to comment on your 
three questions, to see if that helps take them
any further, if no-one else has done so in the meantime.


Regards

Chris Burford





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