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Roger, 
 
I agree with Neri Salvadori's categorization of the issues involved and agree with you
that there are differences in methodological approaches involved.
 
Although reswitching (and related paradoxes) were presented in a world of steady state
comparisons, the underlying technological conditions that give rise
to the possibility of reswitching, which involve issues of time (delayed costs in
particular) even in the original formulation of Sraffa, can lead to certain problematic
outcomes in a context of intertemporal optimization such as Bliss was using.  At the time
he wrote (1975) these were not yet well understood (he was "blissfully" unaware of
them...).  One of these is the possibility of a discontinuity in the optimal time path of
the economy that could manifest itself as a sudden collapse of capital value.
 
I am not going to claim that actual stock market crashes were caused by reswitching, but
this is certainly a non-trivial kind of result.
 
Of course reswitching, per se, does not involve the actual reappearance of a previously
used technique, although it could.  The proper term for that is actually "recurrence."
 
There are of course a variety of reasons that one might give for arguing that "reswitching
is irrelevant" (as Joan Robinson put it).  Tony Brewer mentions one, the claim that it has
never been empirically observed.  I would suggest that this is not the case, although it
is probably true that it is a relatively unusual empirical phenomenon within profit rate
ranges that are empirically relevant.
 
Like some other folks, I shall cite myself. 
 
For a discussion of the dynamic difficulties within the intertemporal optimization
framework, see Chapter 8 of my _From Catastrophe to Chaos: A General Theory of Economic
Discontinuities_, 1991, Boston: Kluwer (second edition, Volume I, same publisher, 2000).
 
For possible empirical examples, see 
 
Peter S. Albin, "Reswitching: An Empirical Observation, A Theoretical Note, and an
Environmental Conjecture," Kyklos 28(1975), pp. 149-153.
 
Raymond Prince and J. Barkley Rosser, Jr., "Some Implications for Delayed Environmental
Costs for Benefit Cost Analysis: A Study of the Western Coal Lands," Growth and Change
16(1985), pp. 18-25.
 
Barkley Rosser 
 
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