Autism and PAE, some observations about brainwork

[Doyle Saylor <doylesaylor@xxxxxxx>]

Greetings Economists,

How admirable that students in Madrid write this slogan:

<x-tad-bigger>“¡La economia es de gente, no de curvas!” – “Economics is about people, not curves!”</x-tad-bigger>

Doyle,

We know they condemn the Orthodox Economics with a math fetish.  I’ve been over this before because PAE clashes directly with the disabled rights movement perspective on labels like Autism.

Ignoring my previous points about this subject, what underlies this label, Autistic, being applied to Economics is a distinction between two kinds of brainwork; language and math.  The slogan above says Economics is about people which equates people or society with ‘language’.  Or that’s implied by the parallel with math use obscuring public interests as they want us to understand.

Let me be just plain here; that’s language chauvinism about brainwork to equate people with language.  And advocates of PAE want us to think Autistics (aka math fetish) is not people though it’s brainwork.

Simple enough. 

To me this represents a deep confusion about what language does and other human kinds of brainwork that contributes to human culture.  Previously Marx wrote about ‘work’ which if one thinks about it is not that much about ‘talk’ and quite a bit about using the body (embodiment) to get something done.  The reason being Marx wanted to get to the foundations of things.  If we get stuck seeing language as the foundation of things we miss the broader picture of things that Marx looked at in the economy.

So in the way things follow in science PAE is deeply confused about the issue of human embodiment in the work process as Marx might have economically defined work.  I mean in the sense of equating people with language brainwork as the foundation of people or society, and in disembodying ‘work’ from economics.

Thanks,

Doyle Saylor