[PEN-L:6861] Re: RE: Old "foggies"/"fogeys"

[Peter Dorman <dormanp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I don't think this is a useful analysis, for two reasons.

1. It assumes a stark opposition between neoclassical economics and
Marxism, with neither overlap nor third alternatives.  This doesn't
describe the actual political/ideological/methodological situation
within economics, either now or in the past.  (It sure doesn't describe
me.)

2. It's use of ideology critique (explanation of the hegemony of certain
ideas according to the interests they reflect) is too abstract.  The
economics profession is an institution with its own internal structures
of power and influence.  True, it is connected to the outside world of
"real" economic and political domination -- but in specific ways that
intersect with its own institutions.  One has to look at the role of
soft money, the NBER, the agendas set by government, and so on.  Even
so, I'm not sure we have a good explanation for the sheer intellectual
arrogance displayed by mainstream economics.  It is more intense than
one finds in other fields, and academics who are not economists
generally find it objectionable.

Incidentally, the fetishism of technique that so many on this list
complain about is not specific to economics.  It seems to be a general
characteristic of academic work in all disciplines and probably has
something to do with the institutional incentives of the modern
university.  (Is it heresy to say that Robert Lucas and Judith Butler
have something fundamental in common?)

Peter

Tom Walker wrote:
>
> The winnowing of the left from economics is hardly surprising if one steps
> back for a moment from who or what economics claims to be and do and
> considers instead how economics is historically situated as a discipline
> within the university and within society -- that is to say, if one takes a
> historical materialist view of economics. Economics is a sub-genre of
> history. It has appropriated to itself the authoritative posture of the
> natural sciences, from which position its objects of study -- the historical
> relationships in society -- necessarily are recast as nature-like.
>
> If one accepts a priori that private property, wage labour and market
> exchange are *essentially* natural, rather than historical, features of
> economic life, then one is reduced to higgling over their contingent weights
> and prices. The mathematics is seductive. It begins soothingly, "if we
> bracket out [for the sake of argument] history . . ." and it concludes
> sternly with a taboo against bringing history back in. But the real scandal
> occurs later with the supplementary concession that history may be appended
> to the [supposedly 'real'] analysis. Thus for economics, history is a
> contingent appendage while private property, wage labour and market exchange
> are essential.
>
> One need only read Lionel Robbins' Essay on the Nature and Significance of
> Economic Science to see precisely how and why historical materialism is
> banished as *non-economics*. "Marxist economics", however, is permitted to
> play the game by the rules, the first of which -- the very definition of the
> object of "economic science" -- is to concede the universality of private
> property, wage labour and market exchange.
>