Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: WSJ on teaching economics

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> There is room here for much more than a mere difference of opinion. For
> someone to claim that they have the *correct* interpretation of a book
> others have misunderstood because of "...Hegelian language... his refusal
> to give a summary" or say "what levels of abstraction he's going to be
> working at" it is pretty clear that *correct* has lost all meaning. There
> are various rational reconstructions of what Marx *ought* to have written:
> Devine's, Wolfson's, Elster's, Cohen's, Althusser's, et cetera. But none
> of them is "correct."
>
> Rational reconstructions are not *correct* interpretations, they are
> *corrections*.

Gee, I -- the "someone" that Brad refers to and quotes -- didn't claim that
I had the "correct" interpretation of Marx. I don't even like the word
"correct" unless it's in a discussion of math or in reference to so-called
"political correctness." (I remember laughing at a paper which I received
that purports to present the "correct" solution to the "transformation
problem.") Rather, I find that Wolfson was far off base, because I found
that he didn't understand the subject matter of his critique. (I find
Heilbroner's critique in his MARXISM: FOR AND AGAINST, for example, to be
within the pale, though I disagree with some of it.)

I agree that there are no "correct" rational reconstructions (RR) of Marx's
ideas. A RR is like a model, and no models (that I have heard of) fit the
empirical reality that they're supposed to describe exactly. Similarly, no
RR will ever fit what Marx said or meant exactly.

BTW, instead of doing the job of constructing RRs, I try to learn how
Marx's ideas can give us insights to understand the world of capitalism
today, as a guide to understanding, (conditional) prediction, and practice.
Marx's specific ideas are often off-base, which should be of no surprise
since he wrote so long ago.

-------------------
for the record, this is what I said. I did a search for the word "correct"
and couldn't find it.

>Since I can't find my copy of his book, I can only mention two things
that Wolfson misrepresented and/or misunderstood dialectics
(contradictions) and Marx's version of the "labor theory of value."
Criticism of Marx is a fine and worthy occupation, but I think that Bob
Dylan said it best don't criticize what you don't understand. And since
Wolfson didn't understand the basic ideas of Marx's method (as opposed to
the orthodox method of economics), he doesn't really understand what Marx
was talking about.

>The book is worthwhile in the sense that Wolfson's misunderstandings come
up again and again (e.g., in Elster's MAKING HASH OF MARX), so that those
who learn from Marx have a good source of how people misread. Part of the
problem is Marx's of course somehow he didn't anticipate the way 20th
century readers would filter his writings though the academic theoretical
framework of their day, so he didn't make it as clear what he was saying as
he should have.

>I must say that I -- someone who's trained in modern NC economics -- had
a hard time understanding Marx the first time I read CAPITAL. Part of that
is all of the Hegelian language he uses, along with his refusal to give a
summary ahead of time of what he's going to say and what levels of
abstraction he's going to be working at in each stage of his exposition.
(On the first text page of vol. III, he gets to this. Unfortunately, this
page is usually ignored.)<


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