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I liked Robin Foliet Neill's post in this thread. The original question
pertained to failures to cite sources containing the ideas that one
attributes to oneself. Neill puts the issue in a broader context, noting
a related phenomenon: "citing an author while moving the substance of the
author's material into an alternative and competing paradigm."
In this case, citation actually does occur, after a fashion. There is,
however, another closely related practice in which citation is *not* made.
It is the failure to cite views and even counter-demonstrations contrary
to one's own position.
In the case I know best, for instance, it is now pretty well known, and it
has been demonstrated, that the internal inconsistencies or errors
ascribed to Marx's value theory and law of the falling rate of profit in
fact stem from one (Bortkiewicz's) particular interpretation. If values
and prices are conceived as being determined in historical time, not
simultaneously, and if the "value of capital advanced" is understood as
the sum of value needed to acquire inputs, not the values of the inputs
themselves, then Marx's conclusions do follow from his premises.
Yet the mainstream -- non-Marxist AND Marxist -- literature
systematically fails to cite these counter-demonstrations. For instance,
none of the authors involved in the 1995 HOPE symposium refer to it. In
some cases, of course, this is the fault, not of the author, but of other
authors who have suppressed the findings, so that the one now writing is
not aware of them. There are, however, numerous (and easily documented)
cases in which authors who are aware of these findings do not mention
them.
Andrew Kliman
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