[PEN-L:9360] Re: more requiem

["Max B. Sawicky" <Max.B.Sawicky@xxxxxxxxx>]

> From:          blairs@xxxxxxx
> Subject:       [PEN-L:9357] Re: more requiem

> Max Sawicky writes,
> >Self-interest pervades all human behavior ..., so I don't see how
> >you can imagine a movement which leaders or people in authority did
> >not seek to exploit for some narrow purpose. The real question is
> >how the process can work to yield constructive reform.
>
> Well, here's an unexamined and bourgeois (read neoclassical economics)
> assumption about human nature.  . . .
> . . .
> I'm aware that you didn't say "self-interest "rules" all human behavior,"
> you just said "pervades." But this is equally meaningless, as in any case
> it provides us with no ability to understand, explain, or predict.

Oh really?  Is it so controversial to suggest
that self-interest is an important factor in
behavior without supplying the remainder of a
full-blown theoretical model?  The context, for
those arriving late and leaving soon, was the
notion that social-democratic and
other bourgeois politicians, as opposed I guess
to politicians of every imaginable Marxist
stripe, act for a complex of reasons that include
self-interest, so the ascription of narrow aims
to a politician was itself meaningless to any
understanding of what that politician was
inclined to do.

> Max, could you be just a *little* more
> theoretically self-conscious, please?

Jesus Christ on a bike!

MBS

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Max B. Sawicky           Economic Policy Institute
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