Heilbroner

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

[was: RE: [PEN-L:26158] RE: RE: Lies, damned lies, and economics]

I find Heilbroner to present a watered-down Marxism most of the time, but
his MARXISM: FOR AND AGAINST was pretty good, simply because he got away
from his usual stuff. I don't agree with it as much as like the way he tries
to find some good stuff in Marxism. Some of the bad stuff he finds is
off-target, but it's worth discussing with students. (If I remember
correctly, his discussion of dialectics comes partly from Ollman and thus
isn't half bad.)

To be more specific about how he waters down Marxism, he often talks Labor
"not existing" before the rise of capitalism (e.g., THE WORLDLY
PHILOSOPHERS, 5th edition, p. 25). Though he's pretty clear that labor _did_
exist before capitalism and that he's referring to "abstract labor" or an
"impersonal, dehumanized economic entity," the whole discussion would have
been much clearer if he'd used Marx's distinction between labor-power and
labor: what he's saying is that labor-power didn't exist _as a commodity_. I
don't insist that everything I read agree with either Marx or me, but his
avoidance of basic Marxian concepts seems to encourage fuzzy thinking.

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



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Forstater, Mathew [mailto:ForstaterM@xxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2002 2:53 PM
> To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [PEN-L:26158] RE: RE: Lies, damned lies, and economics
>
>
> I admire both Galbraith and Heilbroner, but it always seemed
> clear to me
> that Heilbroner (save maybe his New Yorker articles or whatever) was
> writing at a more complex, deeper level (even in NYRB--articles on
> Schumpeter, Keynes, etc.).  One may differ with, e.g., his
> interpretation of dialectics in Marxism: For and Against
> (about which he
> has always remarked that the most important word in the title was
> "and"), but I don't think you can say that it is 'watered
> down'.  While
> it is true that Heilbroner is trying to communicate with an audience
> beyond professional economists or university professors, I
> think he does
> challenge the reader to put some thought into his arguments.
>
> Recently, Heilbroner has said that he thinks of himself as in
> the field
> of education, not economics, and that his favorite work of his own is
> his Visions of the Future, which is not really about economics, but
> looks at how perceptions of the future have changed through
> history, and
> how those perceptions affect the present.
>
> Mat
>