me: > At the recent economics convention, there were at least two
papers of note.
The second paper was by Andrew Kliman (a Professor of Economics at
Pace University). He argued that "we have met the enemy and he is us,"
i.e., that leftist or radical political economists were blocking the
publication of what he sees as a deviant viewpoint because it differs
from the dominant methodological orthodoxy among leftist political
economists ("us"). (The paper, also written by Alan Freeman, in the
_Post-Autistic Economic Review_, available on-line at:
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue40/FreemanKliman40.pdf.)
Since the specifics of Kliman's argument are about a topic that's seen
as inherently boring by most if not all pen-pals (i.e., the so-called
"transformation" of values into prices) those details will be ignored
here. And don't worry: I get beyond consideration of the specifics of
Kliman's point of view as he presented it at the convention to
speculate about methodological issues. It seems that he wants to drop
methodological critiques from radical/leftist political economics
(e.g., in deciding what gets published). Go to *** below to skip the
preliminaries.
Since I don't know enough about the controversy, I can't really take
sides. But the evidence that he presented at the convention was a bit
weak.
There's a quote from David Laibman in _Science & Society_ which could
be interpreted as ruling out Kliman's perspective without any prior
consideration being needed (a methodological fiat) -- or could be seen
as a more sober conclusion of a much longer paper that presented other
arguments against Kliman's view. (I remember the paper implying the
latter, but my memory is notoriously bad... what was I saying?)
Then, there was a quote from someone (a pen-l alumnus who shall remain
nameless) whose editorial comment on a paper by Kliman was especially
vociferous in his critique, contributing to the rejection of that
article by the _Review of Radical Political Economics_, an especially
prestigious venue ;-). I'm sorry, but I have a hard time seeing this
rejection as involving a methodological exclusion of a deviant
viewpoint because (1) I've had articles rejected partly on the basis
of obnoxious reviewers of all sorts without it being such a exclusion;
and (2) I've been verbally trashed by that same individual without it
being methodological persecution of any sort. (Rather, it was poor
manners.) Strangely, the rejection of Kliman's article led to his
launching a law-suit against the RRPE! (It's strange to me, I guess,
because I'm not the litigious sort.)
*** Anyway, I thought that the most interesting point in Kliman's
presentation was that he seemed to _totally_ reject the role of
methodology in deciding what's worth publishing.[*] This piqued my
interest since methodology is part of my "holy trinity" of what
defines clear thinking, along with considerations of internal logical
coherence and external consistency with perceived empirical reality.
I don't know how Kliman defines "methodology," but the way I see it
involves a philosophical dimension of social research: how important
is logical coherence relative to consistency with the perceived real
world? how do these fit together? what general kinds of questions
should we be asking in order to answer more specific questions about
the world? etc. In this view, "methodology" is more of a set of
questions to be asked rather than a set of answers.
I can definitely see how methodology[**] can be an ideological barrier
to understanding the real world. In orthodox economics, for example,
all theories (which are the same as models in this view) must be
stated in terms of equilibrium. (It seems that every phenomenon must
be similar to markets, where equilibrium is sometimes attained.) By
the way, this is akin to the methodological edict that Kliman sees as
applied to his perspective.
This methodological fiat, for example, prevents us from thinking of
the world dialectically, i.e., as a constantly-changing result of the
conflict between two or more dynamic forces in a unified system. It
also does not seem consistent with basic astronomy: the Moon is always
falling toward the Earth, but never hits. If the Moon ever attained
equilibrium, we'd be dead. Closer to home, the psychological and
physiological development of human beings also is a non-equilibrium
process. Equilibrium is attained only in death. The orthodox
economists' view that all thinking must involve equilibrium ends up
being more than telling us what questions to ask; it also restricts us
to finding very specific answers.
But it's a mistake to focus only on the potential of methodology to
become an ideological barrier. A methodology can be positive and
inclusive instead: it can say "if you ask some other questions about
your topic, you might find that your results change." For example, we
might ask _if_ equilibrium is consistent with our results. If it
isn't, we should ask why equilibrium is unnecessary or even totally
irrelevant. Kliman's theory of the "transformation" does not involve
equilibrium, so we might ask what keeps the capitalist economy from
ever being in equilibrium, preventing or automatically disturbing the
process of equilibration and how this force interacts with that of
price determination.
In the end, I see the place of methodology as being to open up
thinking to considering matters that may not be considered
automatically, rather than as involving the closing of one's mind to
alternatives.
[*] Kliman seems to want some sort of affirmative action for deviant
methodologies. That seems to open a gigantic can of worms.
[**] Here, I almost typed "mathodology"! That's an interesting
Freudian slip when referring to a field that worships math.
--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
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