Re: Re: Economics and Literature

[Brad De Long <delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Jim D. wrote:
>
> > At 07:55 PM 9/10/00 -0700, you wrote:
> > > Dierdre McCloskey was claiming this morning that Marx had never
> > > visited either a farm or a factory. Does anyone know of documented
> > > counterexamples?
> >
> > maybe, but didn't his friend Fred manage a factory? If old Karlos
> > didn't have the time or resources to visit Fred's factory, I'm sure
> > that the latter would have corrected any of his misconceptions.
>
> And Engels wrote _Conditions of the English Working Class in 1844_
> as well.  Even in the anti-Marxist conditions of American higher
> education, this book is still frequently assigned in the humanities.
> Everyone who studies Victorian literature must read it in English.
> I don't know if it's read in Economics, though.  Economists seem
> seldom interested to research how workers live & work (hence
> contempt for sociology that Jim mentioned).  Mainstream economics
> seems alien to works like Harry Braverman's _Labor and Monopoly
> Capital_.
>
> Yoshie

Engels was on my core reading list when I last taught British
economic history. But that was a long time ago...

When I teach European or world economic history these days, Engels
gets crowded off the reading list by _Value, Price, and Profit_ and
the _Manifesto_.

Too many books, too little time...

Brad DeLong