Finished
Unequal Exchange by Arghiri Emmanuel, with commentary by Charles Bettelheim (1972 translation by Brian Pearce). The blurb on the back promises something
<systematically and with logical rigor…
Argh is off to a great start by quoting young Marx saying "one nation can grow rich at the expense of another". Argh likes that quote so much he will use it again at the end of this book of arguing against free trade. It is from a speech where Marx did not elaborate on that point
at all and argued
for free trade, but that doesn't bother Argh.
He expresses himself in Marx
ish terms, but contrary to Marx (and reality), he often assumes magically
given shares, property claims on the output fixed ex ante, which is how he then "measures" the factors of production. (And Bettelheim notices that.)
Obnoxiously Argh's notes are at the end of each chapter. Sometimes these are just sources, sometimes sentences that seem as important as what is in the chapter's text or more. Likewise with Bettelheim's contributions. By what arcane procedure the authors decided to shift text into notes I cannot deduce. Here is one example: Page 247 describes a model of trade between Portugal and England:
<Everything has turned out for the better.A little number leads you to this on page 260:
<Except, of course, for Portugal…And the note goes on. And this is not even a particularly obnoxious example, as an alert reader can feel the sarcasm from context here. There are hundreds of notes, and with no visual indicator in the main text whether the note is a mere sourcing note or substantial commentary, I have to constantly go back and forth whenever I see a little number, so you can guess how tedious this gets. Putting the notes at the end of the chapter instead of the same page gives no benefit to readers. (I had to make do with a shitty PDF scan, dual-wielding e-readers and looking like an absolute cunt.)
On pages 90 and 91 is something really manipulative in how Argh quotes Marx. Argh tries to make him say something about stable differences between
countries, the chapter is named
Equilibrium Prices in External Exchanges after all, but the referred passages seem to be about short-term
frictional differences in price formation. Moreover
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