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Fascinating. I wanted to make a couple comments on first read:

1. Concerning the “historical science” of economics, I recall Dudley Dilliard showing us how Marx recognized that technological advancement could extend capitalism’s reign by giving capitalists new opportunities to make profit and sustain the system. It seems to me that 20th century health, transportation and entertainment technology advancements and diffusions alone provided living standards improvements that helped forestall more enthusiasm for Socialism.

2. More interesting here is that Dilliard also made the connection between Marx’s thoughts on production technology and his foreshadowing of the neoclassical (Solow) growth model. In that formulation, in a market economy (of many atomistic consumers and producers operating in a perfectly competitive economy) there is no incentive for overaccumulation of capital, and, therefore, technological advancement (or, if you will, TFP which might also include labor quality) is the only way to advance income per capita.

3. As someone who spent several decades working with empirical models of the economy, I have mixed emotions about the Solow Model, but let’s just say most of them are bad. (In the battle of the Cambridge Ks, I was on the losing side. 😊) That model is used entirely too often to examine and explain the economy, and to the extent that Marx contributed to its dominance, I blame him.

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You have a better memory than me, re: Dudley's class. He was one of my favorite professors. I do recall he made fun of me in class, in his mild-mannered way.

Marx certainly appreciated technological progress under capitalism. However, he wrote that that same progress would equip and motivate the working class to mobilize for power. which is obvious rubbish.

The Cambridge fracas for me underlines the deep flaws of mainstream theory. I couldn't say if Marx had any better view of capital quantification.

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