Suresh Naidu Responds: "Substitutes or Complements: Marx and Brad and Me"

Suresh Naidu at The Slack Wire:

Since Brad Delong has attributed some thoughts on Marx to me, and I have gotten some emails inquiring whether or not I did say them, I thought it would be useful to publically air what I understand to be the context.

Sandwichman was one of the inquisitors. In an earlier post, Return of the Creature from the DeLong Lagoon S. had questioned the accuracy of DeLong's attribution of these thoughts to Naidu. According to Naidu, however:

The context of the long-running conversation [between Naidu and DeLong] has been trying to establish a dialogue between Marx and modern growth theory. Inside the modern production function there is a pretty undifferentiated view of "K" (which leads it into some troubles as bad as any in the labor theory of value). Marx on the other hand distinguishes (at least) machines, technology, and money-qua-productive-input as different from each other conceptually. The fact that these are rolled into an aggregate production function by mainstream growth theory is not Marx's fault. And so when somebody is trying to translate Marx into modern economics, the slippage between what is "K" and "what Marx meant" can get confusing.

This no doubt explains DeLong's comment that Marx, "vanishes into the swamp which is the attempt to reconcile the labor theory of value with economic reality, and never comes out." It is not Marx's fault that he vanishes into the swamp of trying to establish a dialogue between Marx and modern growth theory (inside of which there is a pretty undifferentiated view...) the attempt to reconcile the labor theory of value with economic reality the modern production function. Or something.