``I'm currently designing a series of history of economic thought reading groups that is going pretty well. One problem is Marx...''
Nathan Tankus ------------- Certainly a long over due. But are you sure you want to take this on as a serious project? I ask that because I've been mulling over Julio Huato's quick note on Protagoras, Man (anthropos) is the measure of all things. This got me to thinking about Economics as a totality of thought and its transformation under current political regimes into an arc from man is the measure, to market is the measure, to money is the measure. This idea came from Jim Devine's quote of Hobbes on price, that everyman has his price, relative to the need for his expertise. The examples were generals in time of war, and uncorrupt judges in times of peace. If I had money, I would favor corrupt judges anytime. Uncorrupt judges are very untrustworthy. What emerged for me was not an answer to the question what is the value of a human life, but what is Economics? The answer I came up with was that Economics was not a social science, or an ideology, but an entire social philosophy and the prevailing one that permeates all action and discourse. Hence the joke, that committing evil was too expensive. Well leave that alone for the moment. Reorient the idea of a history of economic thought, as a history of social philosophy. As a philosophical system it has gross partitions as a theory of state, a theory of market, a theory of society. In reality, they are all one giant fur ball. This is a much bigger realm than what I am sure you had in mind. But just consider it as a `big picture' view of things. Here is an exercise that I discovered by googling Adam Smith. Look down on the right to `people also searched' and mediate for a moment on the list of characters. They are Marx, Ricardo, Keynes, Hume, Mill, Malthus, Locke, Milton Friedman(!!!), Hayek, Rousseau, Hobbes, Marshall, Aristotle, Schumpeter, Kant, Weber, Montesquieu, Engles, Quesnay, and Voltaire. Most wrote on society and state in general terms and a lot of them were associated with our concepts of political-social liberalism. This association has lead the absurd idea that an under regulated market is equivalent to human freedom. In turn this identity is bourn out in the fact that somebody who has billions will certainly be more free from social, legal, and political restrictions than somebody with 99.9 percent less. In any event, I've decided that economics is a social philosophy, in particular a philosophy of society and state and as such is open to infinite critiques like any other philosophy from its truth claims and internal consistancies or lack thereof, to its ability to articulate or pontificate on social and political activities and their value schemes. What follows is that a history of this field or even just its luminaries, will also need a philosophy of history in order to understand its subject. This need arises from the concept of social history as a subfield of history and is often rejected by the history dons who for some reason have the mistaken idea that history is an objective field. Clearly history is not objective. So the best solution is to lay out your premises and try to stick to them. It is within the premises you choose that you will find out how to integrate Marx. My premise is the coeval history of society and state where Marx fits in as critic of the whole bourgeois state and pretense of an independent market ``I'm worried that covering Marx at all would lead to an enormous argument over Marx and limit/kill learning...'' You just have to lay out the rules of participation like any listmaster. Put up general rules and see. People get warnings if they are on some crank of their own. If they persist, then they get booted. Hey good luck and post some of the course now and again and some high points from the readers... CG _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
