[Marxism] Karl Marx And the Classics

[Louis Proyect]

Angelus Novus wrote:
> oh, and also a good introductory piece on the "new
> reading of Marx":
> 
> http://www.oekonomiekritik.de/205Invaders.htm
> 

Maybe I am missing something, but after taking a quick look at the "New 
Reading of Marx" link you posted, I don't find much there different from 
what I have read on the archives of Gerry Levy's OPE-L list. Levy set up 
his mailing list about 12 years ago and it consists of about 80 or so 
economics professors who are what Hal Draper once called "Marxologists". 
Levy set up the list with the intention of "completing" the work of Karl 
Marx, which means polishing up Volumes 2 and 3 of Capital. Good luck. 
That's been an ongoing cottage industry since the days of 
Turan-Baranowsky at least. Battles rage around the question of the 
falling rate of profit, the "transformation problem", etc. but never get 
resolved. They don't get resolved because they are fundamentally 
involved with abstractions. In the physical sciences, you can prove a 
theorem through a laboratory experiment. How can one possibly prove the 
Okishio Theorem?

A glance at "New Reading of Marx" found some useful information, 
particularly around the origins of the debate around crisis theory, but 
I doubt that this sort of thing will have any kind of earthshaking 
consequences. In my view, the best thing that a Marxist economist can do 
today is conduct studies of the capitalist economy, with Lenin's book on 
the transformation of agrarian Russia a model. In the 12 years that I 
have been looking at the OPE-L archives, I have found not a single word 
about the real world. Well, maybe 2 or 3 but that's about it.