[was: RE: [PEN-L:22383] Re: RE: Religing Marxism, was AM Histor ical Mat
eriali sm 3][is that an incoherent title or what?]
I wrote:>>BTW, I find religious attitudes all the time in economics. For
example, there's the worship of the market (the U of Chicago) or the worship
of mathematics for its own sake (UC-Berkeley). But I think it's best to
attack these faiths on the basis of facts, logic, and methodology (the
unholy trinity) instead of simply insulting them. <<
Fred Guy writes:>Does the unfortunate, and often destructive, worship of
abstract constructs by people you disagree with, make more pallatable the
worship of the words of a 19th century social scientist by comrades you're
engaged in debate with?<
I don't worship any words. Note that I believe in using "facts, logic, and
methodology" rather than quotations from Marx, H*yek, or any other "Master."
If other people want to worship words, that's their decision, as long as
it's not harmful.
>>there are few people like this on pen-l (the relevant venue). However,
it does make sense to quote the so-called "Master": Marx's theory forms a
unified whole that differs from the standard academic orthodoxy and is
often misinterpreted.<<
>The belief that Marx's theory forms a unified whole is exactly the
problem. It is, like the theory of anybody interesting, full of both
detritus from other theories and false starts. The LOV/LTV is arguably
and example of both. I think that a lot of people, including some on
this list, wish Marx's theory formed a unified whole, and try to treat
it that way. It doesn't. That's not a bad thing. If it did form a
unified whole I think it would be an inert relic, a perfect museum piece
from a past master. As it is, it's just one person's contribution to an
ongoing conversation.<
1) Marx's theory, once you clear out a lot of the remainders such as
Ricardo's labor theory of price and the like, can be made to make sense as a
unified whole. However, that whole has a totally unpredictable element right
at the center, so that it is not the "totalizing vision" that some decry:
the response of the working people to the totalizing expansion of capitalism
is very very difficult to understand or predict.
2) in this light, what's wrong with having a unified theory? what's wrong
with a theory being old ("a perfect museum piece")? Newtonian physics is old
and unified, but still applies in non-relativistic frames of reference and
outside of quantum mechanics.
>>I fact, a lot of people misrepresent Marx. I have poor memory for
quotes, so I don't do it, especially since it's quite easy for someone
to quote like crazy and still misinterpret Marx (as Jon Elster, among
others, does so often). (As my old friend Steve Zeluck used to say, "the
devil can quote scipture." Elster is much better when he does micro-theory
than when he writes about Marx.)<<
>I hesitate to ask this question, because I do not believe that you, Jim,
are a fundamentalist. [thanks!]
>But is not an abiding concern with the correct representation of a
particular text (especially given that we're not dealing with a living
author or a legal document or the dignity of some people's history, and that
our interest is primarily as students of and actors in the contemporary
world) a symptom of fundamentalism / literalism? <
My abiding concern isn't with defending Marx. I see Marx's theory as simply
aiding us attain what I see as my true abiding concern, i.e., understanding
the world and figuring out how to change it. Other theories often
contribute, but Marx's is the most important in the bunch.
>>BTW, as Lakatos and Kuhn and others have pointed out, it is quite
reasonable for scientists to cling to core propositions "even in the face of
overwhelming contrary argument and experience." And economists do this:
for example, orthodox economists continue to talk about "rational"
utility-maximizing consumers even though these don't exist and don't
make sense except in a very limited way (i.e., as tautologically true). This
is a core proposition used to understand a more complicated world.
Similarly, Marxian economics can use the true-by-definition law of value to
understand the world. <<
>Yeah, but that's not a good reason to hang onto a useless core
proposition. The idea of the rational utility maximizing consumer,
although often seriously wrong and arguably a poisoner of young minds,
does give us tractable models which are useful for many purposes. (It is
my belief that almost all economists, including those who despise
formalism and/or neoclassical assumptions, carry in their heads and
frequently use some nice little models of monopoly pricing, prisoner's
dilemmas, and so on.) And, although the rational actor assumption it is
often treated as true-by-definition, it also produces testable
propositions, as a growing body of experimental economics shows.<
As I understand it (and the guy in the office next door is actively involved
with this), the growing body of experimental economics has increasingly
_rejected_ a specific version of the rational actor assumption, i.e., the
radical individualist with no moral standards, etc. The rational actor model
I'm referring to is the one of "revealed preference," the one where
everything it chooses can be interpreted as a rational choice. (Even
inconsistency is rational if one has a taste for variety.) Sometimes
economists mix up these two "rational actors" because the tautological one
can be used to defend the rejected one.
>In contrast, almost all modern work on classical value theory is inward
looking, asking whether the idea is, or can be made, intellectually
coherent. Beyond that, it's no use. Its main function today is to anchor
a certain subset of Marxist discourse in a distinct and oppositionist
location.<
yeah, most lefty economics are inward-looking, because the left is so small.
(It grew when there were mass movements against the war, patriarchy, etc.,
and shrank when those waned.) I wonder if inward-lookingness is better or
worse than doing economics simply to please the academic powers that be, the
Big Name economists, with their Big Name journals and departments. Of
course, perhaps we can find the "golden mean" between these two...
The allegation of inward-lookingness is no argument against engaging in
philosophical or methodological discussion. For me, the argument against
that kind of discussion only applies when it's one's _only_ interest. To me,
the point is to do both abstract (high theoretical) and concrete (empirical)
analysis -- and in-between analysis -- and to try to make sure that they are
consistent with each other, while trying to use insights from one level of
abstraction to help with another.
Jim Devine
