Alejandro Ramos <aramos@btl.net> said, on 11/12/00: RE: 4508 >>"A History of Marxian Economics" by Howard and King (a survey I don't >>much care for, but it surely leads one to lots of sources). >This is one of the most biased books I have seen in my life. Frankly, I >envy their resources availability but unfortunately the authors wasted >them. I think you have mentioned their treatment of Rosa Luxemburg's >work... Sadly, I have to agree with you. Author after author they evaluate is not "good enough" for them. ... >My concern is whether or not is possible to >get the scientific content of Marx's work in order to understand >capitalism. From the beginning it has been contended that it has no >scientific content at all because Marx's work is logically flawed. >Initially only bourgeois economists said that. Today, a great deal of >marxist economists (say, Howard & King!) agree with this, *uncritically* >accepting all the arguments put forward by the right. [Also, RE: 4509: "I only wanted to point out that the task is very difficult and that marxist economist have made it even more difficult."] I agree, as long as you are not holding EVERY "marxist economist" responsible. ... >>Concerning intra-Marxist relations, Rakesh has a point that ought to be >>examined, maybe within our individual thoughts (I'm almost tempted to use >>the expression "self-criticism" but I don't think this is a useful >>formulation in an internet interchange). >Why? I don't understand your point here. I do think that we should exert >a permanent "self criticism" and I try to do that, perhaps unsuccesfully! >These exchanges are very useful in this direction because allow one to >work hard on the issues. >>I don't expect much change, >>however, as we as individuals are mostly whom we are. >Please, explain! Alejandro, I wasn't thinking of you or specific theoretical issues, but Rakesh's remark "Marxist economics seems to suffer from academic dogmatism and hierarchy as any other discipline. I don't see any point in denying this even if Marxist economists are marginalized by their apologist colleagues. For which they have my sympathy." I was saying that for him to exactly "explain" that feeling and for others to respond one way or another would require a kind gestalt setting which we don't have available on the internet. That doesn't make Rakesh's obseravtion any less legitimate. Paul Z.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Nov 30 2000 - 00:00:05 EST