Re: Re: Re: Phil Mirowski

[JKSCHW@xxxxxxx]

Well, I think this is unfair to Schweickart, who is more Keynsian than NCE in his own economics. My own defene of  MS is based on a modified Austrian conceptionof markets, not on a NCE one. --jks

In a message dated Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:45:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time, phillp2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

<< What I think should be recognized is that almost all the debate, pro
and con re market socialism has been couched in neoclassical
terms.  (Indeed, if you look at my review of Jossa and Cuomo in
ROPE, that is my first comment.)  But the debate on MS is in NC
terms because the whole debate back to Barone has been in
nc/GE terms.  That is why it fitted into the AM framework of
Roemer.  It is also the reason why I like Horvat because, although
he sometimes argued using a NC framework, he by and large
rejected the NC model of a (market) socialism system and argued
it on much more instituational/marxist grounds. (That is why I like
the PE of Socialism so much).  Vanek, as much as I respect his
work, is also thoroughly grounded in NC -- indeed all the
assumptions of the Ward-Vanek-Domar model are neoclassical.
Horvat, on numerous occassions, pointed out that (in Yugoslavia)
people just didn't behave that way and the empirical results
contradicted the neoclassical model.  This criticism was directed
as much at the Austrian nonsense as it was at the neoclassical
critique.

What bothers me about the pro market socialist views of Vanek,
Schweikart, Jossa and Cuomo, and the later views of Lange, is that
they are all founded in the fundamental belief in NC economics.
The central planners are the worst because their views are founded
not only on NC assumptions but on GE which, given the capital
controversy, is nonsense.  (By the way, if you are willing to accept
the NC framework, Jossa and Cuomo prove quite rigourously that
MS is superior to capitalism and central planning.  But that is not
the point I want to make.)

Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba


Date sent:          Thu, 20 Jul 2000 18:02:55 -0700
To:                 pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From:               Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject:            [PEN-L:22060] Re: Phil Mirowski
Send reply to:      pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

> At 04:42 PM 07/19/2000 -0700, you wrote:
> >  Oskar Lange.... by 1938 he was the prime defender of planning in the
> > socialist calculation debate, an early interpreter of Keynesianism, and a
> > Marxist.  His initial impact on the Chicago scene was to polarize
> > conceptions of formal economics in even starker terms than one might find
> > elsewhere. In the minds of many at Chicago, Walrasian mathematical theory
> > became conflated with socialism, crude numerical empiricism, and
> > politically na?ve welfare economics.
>
> wasn't Walras himself some sort of vague, technocratic, socialist?
>
> Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
>

 >>