Moishe Postone suggests that Marx produced a Critique of Political Economy, NOT a Critical POlitical Economy. That would imply that there can be no such thing as a Marxist Economics -- because there can be no such thing as a Science of Economics, period. Robert Albritton has a chapter that suggests something similar. He identifies three levels of "theory." First, there is Theory proper, Marx's Critique, which refers (as Marx indicates in aphrase in Vol. 3) to Marx's Critique of the "ideal average" of all possible "capitalist societies." It does NOT, then, apply directly to any particular capitalism. It is not an "economic theory" as we ordinarily use that term. Secondly, Albritton speaks of "Midlevel Theory." (Albritton himself seems to believe that Marx did lay the basis for an economic science.) Midlevel theory would deal with particular epochs of capitalism, such as the Liberal Captialism of England in the 19th-c or the Neoliberal Period. And finally there would be attempts to deal with current actuality, which Albritton calls _History_.
I'm sketching this out in response to the inability of the economists on this e-list to reach agreement on almost anything. A progressive theory (or science) will of course generate significant differences among its practioners, but those differences will be at the "cutting edge" of the discipline; they will not constantly reoccur concerning fundamental axioms, theses, definitions, etc. But such differences erupt in all 'schools' of economics. In other words, attempts to describe the curren economy generate exactly the kind of differences that one regularly encounters among historians. Economics, then, Marxist or otherwise, is apseudo science. Marxists who are econoomists might write differently if they were to put politics at the forefront of their discussions and disputes. That means no empirical predictions, I think. Just sort of thinking with my fingers. Carrol _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
