Re: the expression "political economy"

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 02:34 PM 4/7/00 -0400, you wrote:
> Can someone please comment on whether or not the following is correct?
>
> The meaning of the expression "political economy", as it is used today, is
> not identical with the meaning of the expression "political economy", as it
> was used by Marx and his contemporaries. In today's usage, "political
> economy" refers to a treatment of economic problems with  a strong emphasis
> on the political side (the politics of economics), as opposed to a
> de-politicized ("economistic") view of economics.

That's a leftish kind of political economy. But there's more than one kind
of political economy, at least if we follow the definition that dominates
the economics profession in the US: James Buchanan and his followers, for
example, do a kind of "political economy" that reduces politics to an
imperfect kind of market.

>  At Marx's time the
> discipline of economics had not been ravaged by scientism yet.

back then, "political science," economics, and sociology were all merged.
Max Weber did political economy, though nowadays he is labelled a sociologist.

> Is this interpretation correct?

I think that it's often a mistake to emphasize the meaning of terms too
much, since what they mean depends on the context.

To me, political economy refers to a kind of economics which merges
political science, economics, and sociology, including institutions and
history as part of our understanding of both markets and present day
events. Marxian political economy treats capitalism as a human-made
institution which is historically limited (will not last forever). This
differs from the official view of the US economics profession.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine