---------- Forwarded message ---------- >From: Rakesh Narpat Bhandari <rakeshb@Stanford.EDU> Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 11:38:51 -0700 >Re Rakesh's [5728]: > > >> <snip,JL>, but Jerry you refuse to acknowledge that it is obvious >> that Gil, Steve and Ajit think of value theoretic marxists as >> charlatans who need to be taken out root and branch. > >Well ... I don't think that they want value-theoretic Marxists >"to be taken out" [!] "root and branch." Jerry, please note how Steve characterizes value theoretic marxists in his debunking book. we are not treated any more sympathetically than i treated the hare krishnas. > > >No, I don't believe it has been the main grounds. Indeed, I don't >think that the supposed inconsistency of Marx's theory comes up >very often when meainstream economists discuss Marx and Marxists. it comes up in the histories of economic thought which I have read. > >Rather, the criticism (i.e. dismissal) that is repeated over and >over again concerns the alleged irrelevance of Marxism for >contemporary capitalism and 'the death of communism'. but economics requires technical criticisms. > > >> Sure they have a similar problem; there are only so many so called >> radicals you need to root marxism out of the academy. But we have a >> different estimation of what the true function of these other >> heterodox traditions is. > >Yes, we do. You weren't around at the time, so you don't recall, >but there are a lot of Post-Keynesians who put their careers on the >line when they came out in support of the UK Cambridge position in >the Cambridge Controversies. that seems just to have been a tempest in the teapot--some attempt to get economics to speak to the radical times by returning to questions of distribution. I guess you are impressed by this, but we know what marx thought of JS Mill's focus on the distributional problems of capitalism. > Even now *at best* they are viewed as >'eccentrics' by neo-neo-classical economists. Just like the nnc's >view Marxists. > > >> Marx carried out an extensive critique of >> other socialisms. And the neoricardian postkeynesian theory is the >> underpinning for a form of state socialism which would have been >> subject to massive critique by Marx. > >"State socialism?" >Of course, Marx would have subjected other radical perspectives to >critique. Similarly, we should subject those same perspectives to >critique and _vice versa_. > >> > Even _for marginalists_, they >> >might have problems getting jobs if they specialize >> >in certain 'arcane' areas -- especially history of >> >economic thought, economic history, or economic >> >philosophy. >> Well they will surely find mentors and networks. > >Will they? I'm not convined. > >> Again I think it's astonishing that you and others won't admit that >> the bourgeoisification of any radical journal is always a live >> threat, always in the process of almost completing itself. But we >> just have a different sense of the constraints on scholarship. > >Of course, it *can* happen. Yet, simply because it is a possibility >does not mean in this (or other) cases that it necessarily *has* >happened. Should we just *assume*, without evidence, that there >has been discrinmination against individuals based on their >theoretical perspective? Are these journals to be judged guilty >simply because they are accused of a crime? I draw my conclusions from the absence of a reply to the counter-criticisms. Yours, Rakesh
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