Free to Lose: An Introduction to Marxist Economic Philosophy By John E. Roemer
Publisher: Harvard University Press 1988-12-12 | 216 Pages | ISBN: 0674318765 |
PDF | 11 MB
Students who wish to learn Marxist economics must, for the most part, master a
language that is a century old and not visibly compatible with what they read
in contemporary social science. My aim in this book is to present the lasting
ideas of Marxist economics in a way that makes them accessible to readers
today. But it would be dishonest to say that only the language is new. Many
classic Marxist arguments do not appear here, or have been drastically revised,
because I believe they are wrong. The theory of the falling rate of profit is a
case in point. And the labor theory of value, so important in the classic
Marxist account, is unimportant here, for it contributes nothing to our
understanding and, even when most charitably interpreted, is at best
misleading. It is, indeed, a secondary purpose of this book to show that the
conclusions of Marxist analysis do not depend at all on the labor theory of
value. The revised Marxism I present is shaped by the insights that the tools
of contemporary economics-that is, neoclassical economics-can bring to bear.
In the century since Marx wrote, his ideas have been important in large part
because they provide an argument for the immorality of the capitalist system;
and my theme is, similarly, to trace the connections between the economic
concepts of Marxism and the ethical ideas to which they are related. Whereas
contemporary neoclassical economics advertises its moral neutrality, the task
of Marxist economics is to challenge the defensibility, from a moral viewpoint,
of an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production.
The method of economic theory can provide only one kind of argument in this
debate, but one that I hope reveals its usefulness, especially in connection
with historical, sociological, and philosophical approaches.
The material I present can form the syllabus of an upper division or graduate
course in Marxist economic philosophy. I hope the book will be useful to social
science and philosophy students and to the social scientist or philosopher who
wants an elementary and quite brief presentation of the links between political
philosophy and the ideas of exploitation, class, and historical materialism.
I wish to thank my students, whose enthusiasm encouraged me to write this book,
and my friends in the September Group ("Marxismus sine stercore tauri"), who
have met annually in London for the better part of a decade to argue about what
Marxism has to offer to the social science of our day. This book reflects what
I have taken from those discussions. I am especially grateful for the
comradeship of G. A. Cohen and David Donaldson, who read the manuscript and
commented on it in a degree of detail far beyond what duty required.
Finally, I am indebted to Jodi Simpson of Harvard University Press for her
incisive editorial work.
John E. Roemer
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