Re: Rational Choice/Analytical M.

[HANLY@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Recently rakesh wrote:
Developing the argument, Bronner concludes "even the best thinkers of
rational choice Marxism find themselves desperately grasping at an
indeterminate entity--a subject that is really not a subject at all--whose
motivations are imputed and then definitionally exhausted by an arbitrary
mathematical game with fixed rules dependent upon a causality blind to
issues of meaning, dignity and the will to resist." (271)

  While this description of rational choice Marxism is not lacking in murk, it
does make an important point about rational choice theory generally. For the
most part rational choice theory is not empiricist at all. It is a deductive
theory in which rationality is technically defined as maximizing utility and
then various highly abstract situations are imagined and what is the rational
behavior deduced--as in classical situations such as the Prisoner's Dilemma
 The models of general equibiliria in neo-classical economics are
also quite unempirical. Indeed, one of the standard criticisms
of neo-classical theory is that it is not testable or refutable. Not
endearing characteristics to earlier empiricist theorists.
   Marxist academics have usually been relegated to the margin of mainstream
economic theory. With analytical marxism you now have a group of academics
calling themselves Marxist who use mainstream methodologies of neo-classical
economics, game and rational choice theory. Indeed one author has called
analytical marxism Walrasian Marxism. This gives them a form of
legitimation within the academy and no doubt does not harm their economic
situation either. Of course some may feel that these tools can be helpful
to leftists and should not discarded simply because they are mainstream.
However, the methodology as noted is unalterably individualist-as least in
Elster and Roemer, and makes complete hash of any Marxist interpretation
of economic reality. Surely, neo-classical economics is basically a deductive
theology supporting capitalism rather than an empirical science. Typically, as
with theology no neo-classical is going to dump the theory because it fails to
predict well or is seemingly contradicted by the facts. It is the mathematical
beauty and rigor that counts, and of course the unacknowledged ideological use
values to capitalist policy makers.
  Cheers, Ken Hanly
  Cheers, Ken Hanly







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