Krugman, Clark and Vernengo.

Among many other awards and honours, Paul Krugman won in 1991 the John Bates Clark Medal.

Paul Krugman (2014) on distribution:

"There are a few economists on the left who seem to believe that:
"…
"2. If you believe in, or even use, marginal productivity theory, you are conceding that capitalists deserve their income.
"Neither of these things are true. … And saying that capital gets its marginal product in no way says that the people who own that capital deserve what they get." (emphasis mine)

John Bates Clark (1908) on distribution:

"The welfare of the laboring classes depends on whether they get much or little; but their attitude toward other classes-and, therefore, the stability of the social state-depends chiefly on the question, whether the amount that they get, be it large or small, is what they produce. If they create a small amount of wealth and get the whole of it, they may not seek to revolutionize society; but if it were to appear that they produce an ample amount and get only a part of it, many of them would become revolutionists, and all would have the right to do so. The indictment that hangs over society is that of 'exploiting labor.' 'Workmen' it is said, 'are regularly robbed of what they produce. This is done within the forms of law, and by the natural working of competition.' If this charge were proved, every right-minded man should become a socialist; and his zeal in transforming the industrial system would then measure and express his sense of justice.". (emphasis mine)

Clark sets out to disprove that labour was exploited by capitalists: he was an anti-Socialist. In "The Distribution of Wealth: a Theory of Wages, Interest, and Profits" Clark purports to show that each "factor of production" was remunerated according to its marginal contribution to output: if capital gets a larger and increasing share it's because its contribution is objectively greater, and growing.

Labour, on the other hand, creates only a small amount of wealth and gets the whole of it: it has no reason to complain.

Paraphrasing Krugman, Clark (whom never before had been accused of socialism or of leftism) is "conceding that capitalists [and workers] deserve their income".

If you accept Clark's argument (which any micro101 textbook teaches: it supposedly justifies the decreasing slope of production functions), his conclusion for you is, as it should be for Krugman, a positive fact (following Milton Friedman's terminology). Of course, Paul Krugman can deplore that on normative grounds. But that is a value judgment, a personal preference.

Krugman used to know this. In his 1992 pioneering piece on inequality (one of the first dealing on that subject in the popular press), Krugman wrote:

"Rising inequality need not have any policy implications. Even if you would prefer to have a flatter distribution … what should we do about it?"

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Matías Vernengo discusses this subject here and here. Perhaps Vernengo would find it easier to explain that exploitation, contra Clark, is a positive fact, even if unpalatable to some.

MIA: Marxists Internet Archive or Missing in Action?

The Marxists Internet Archive (MIA), as readers may know, is a non-profit online library/publisher of the work of Marxist and non-Marxist authors, made freely accessible by a group of voluntaries.

The Marx and Engels Collected Works (MECW), understandably enough, are a part of the content MIA features.

However, a consortium formed by Lawrence & Wishart (self-described as “independent radical publisher”, founded in 1936 and originally linked to the British Communist Party), Progress Publishers (Moscow) and International Publishers (New York) holds the copyright over at least volumes 1 to 10 of MECW and demanded that MIA remove them from their website by April 30th: ironically, Labour Day's eve.

If I am not mistaken, this would affect the first 10 volumes as in the following list:

• General Introduction
• Volume 1: (M) August 1835-March 1843
• Volume 2: (E) August 1838-December 1842
• Volume 3: (M) March 1843-Aug 1844. (E) May 1843-June 1844.
• Volume 4: (M/E) 1844-45, incl. Holy Family & Condition of Working Class
• Volume 5: (M/E) April 1845-April 1847, including German Ideology
• Volume 6: (M/E) 1845-48, including Poverty of Philosophy and Manifesto
• Volume 7: (M/E) 1848, articles for Neue Rheinische Zeitung
• Volume 8: (M/E) 1848-49, articles from Neue Rheinische Zeitung
• Volume 9: (M/E) 1849, articles from Neue Rheinische Zeitung
• Volume 10: (M/E) 1849-51, including Peasant War in Germany

Lawrence & Wishart claim they need the revenue potentially generated by the sale of those volumes to educative institutions (W&L's full statement); while the MIA acknowledges L&W's legal rights, they deplore their decision (here, for their response).

Scott McLemee (from Crooked Timber) commented on the subject (some of the interventions in the comments thread are particularly useful); Ammar Aziz (from Lahore, Pakistan) is collecting signatures for his No Copyright for Marx Engels Collected Work public petition to L&W.

I'd urge L&W and MIA to keep the discussion, hoping that a compromise between their legitimate interests is reached.

Chris Dillow: Keynes' anti-Semitism.

Here I was, making a big deal of "my" discovery of Keynes' anti-Semitism not knowing Chris Dillow and others wrote about it 5 years ago. Dillow:

"In a cryptic footnote here (pdf, via), Paul Samuelson refers to Keynes' anti-Semitism."

So, credit where credit is due.

Dillow makes some pertinent observations, which one should keep in mind before passing judgment on his Lordship's work:

"Even Keynes' admirers (such as Skidelsky and Moggridge) agree that Keynes was anti-Semitic - though in his favour it doesn't seem to have stopped him supporting Jewish refugees or even Zionism."

While I suspect Lord Skidelsky and Prof. Donald E. Moggridge aren't exactly representative of the universe of Keynes' admirers, I would leave things at that.

"And of course, his view of Jews is irrelevant in assessing the relevance of Keynesian economics today; we should avoid the 'poisoning the well' fallacy".

Again, Dillow is right (mostly). Keynes' views on Jews certainly seem irrelevant in assessing the role of aggregate demand in the business cycle, for instance, or the usefulness of fiscal stimulus; but they are highly relevant in assessing other parts of Keynes' legacy.

Ironically, a leading Jewish American disciple of Keynes, an avowedly anti-Marxist one, shows how his Lordship's anti-Semitic fixation could cloud his judgment. (I'll remind readers of my contention that Keynes' anti-Semitism had an influence in his criticism of Marx: link.)

The disciple is Paul Samuelson, whose "cryptic footnote" Dillow mentioned above (my emphasis):

"Keynes's visceral social repugnance would interest future historians less if it never contaminated his intellectual judgments. However early on, like Bertrand Russell, Keynes did recognize barbaric evils in Lenin's utopia. Strange though that instead of discovering the key role of Georgian Josef Stalin, it was the beastliness of Leon (Lev) Trotsky that Keynes's pen picks up on". (Paul Samuelson. "A few remembrances of Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992)," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 69 (2009) 1–4, page 3 footnote)

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Joan Robinson, a leading member of the English branch of the Keynesian family, describes her fellow economists' attitude towards Marx (Joan Robinson. "Preface to the second edition". An Essay on Marxian Economics. Macmillan. 1966. pp. vi-vii.):

"In those days [early 1940s] most of my academic colleagues in England thought that to study Marx was a quaint pastime (though Keynes, who was allergic to Marx's writings, received my Essay kindly) and in the United States it was disreputable".

Rational criticism, however, didn't explain that attitude:

"The academics did not even pretend to understand Marx. It seemed to me that, apart from prejudice, a barrier was created for them by his nineteenth-century metaphysical habits of thought, which are alien to a generation brought up to inquire into the meaning of meaning". (Emphasis mine)

I wonder to what extent that applies to Keynes himself and to what extent things changed since.

Was DeLong Right?

After pouring long-thought scorn on Karl Marx and his economics ("I have long thought that Marx's fixation on the labor theory of value made his technical economic analyses of little worth", link), Prof. Brad DeLong revealed how he came to those erudite views:

"The economist Suresh Naidu once remarked to me that there were three big problems with Karl Marx's economics. (…) And, third, Marx was fixated on the labor-theory of value". (link)

Those puzzling about DeLong's opinion finally learned where it came from: he's long thought what Suresh Naidu once remarked to him. DeLong doesn't make any excuses: it's not his fault.

(DeLong's dog never ate his homework, either -- if you, like me, were wondering)

But, as DeLong also wrote:

"Thus he vanished into the swamp, the dark waters closed over his head, and was never seen again."

Naidu, understandably, decided to make his own opinion crystal clear:

"The larger point is that Marx's fertile mind generated many ideas, distributed over a lifetime of thinking and writing exactly as capitalism was transforming itself and the world". (link)

To me, this seems diametrically opposed to DeLong's unqualifiedly negative opinion. And if one is right, the other must be wrong, yes? Well, no; not necessarily, it seems. In fact, I must be mistaken, judging by Naidu's closing remarks:

"But all this said, I think Brad wrote a good column, even if the question of 'Was Marx Right?' is fundamentally silly".

So, there, the mystery is solved. However diametrically opposed, everybody's right; DeLong isn't wrong, neither is Naidu. It's all the NYTimes editors' fault, for asking silly questions! And Michael Roberts' too, for making irksome comments!

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What the hell, I also blame Sandwichman, who also commented on Suresh Naidu's guest post at Slack Wire!

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Now you may have noticed I sometimes seem less than impressed by mainstream economists (including many from some of the warring Keynesian sects), among other things for their apparently philistine attitude to Marx.

For instance, lately I've commented on the NewKe(ynesian) Prof. DeLong; but I've also been known to comment on a PoMo PoKe Wunderkind (furiously anti-NewKe, btw, apart from anti-Marxist); even the big cheese himself, Lord Keynes, has not escaped criticism.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against Keynesian economists. As a matter of fact, some of my closest friends are Keynesian economists…