Harry says:
> On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, gerald_a_levy wrote:
>
> > > >What should be noted, though, connecting with something you wrote
> > > >in [6877], is that *economics* (by which I mean here, bourgeois or
> > > >'mainstream' economic theory) *is* boring. And this should be a
> > > >significant conclusion of the critique of economics: i.e. it inverts
what
> > > >should be the vitally-important and fascinating comprehension of how
> > > >systems of production, distribution, and exchange and class struggle
> > > >impact peoples' lives into an eminently boring -- and trivial --
subject.
> > >
> > > I agree completely.
>
> I don't. For many years I have confronted this tendency on the part of
> student critics of capitalism, especially Marxist students, to complain
> about mainstream economics being boring and trivial and not worth the
> trouble. During this time I have argued the following: while there are a
> lot of boring technical details, especially as the profession sought more
> and more sophisticated mathematics to accomplish more or less the same
> things as in the past, in general the study of mainstream economics should
> be taken on as an essential exercise in class espionage. Mainstream
> economics is not just ideology and not just wrong; it is a key component
> of capitalist strategy and is used to devise tactics against the rest of
> us. To think that the enemy's thinking is boring and trivial is to risk
> not taking it seriously and not learning to read it strategically and thus
> not understanding the strategies and tactics being used against you.
When I say that economics is boring, I do not mean that it is not
important to study it. I mean that to understand economics as capitalist
strategy, we must understand that a fundamental aspect of that "strategy" is
that the economic form is actively boring: it bores, it alienates, it is
part of the process of separating us from the collective determination of
our own doing. The economic form is a process of excluding the subject, in
other words. It is a process of boring (but it is not trivial).
Harry says:
> Read in the spirit of espionage and as an urgent task in the
development
> of counterstrategies in the class struggle, bourgeois economics is not
> boring but as exciting as the investigation of enemy plans discovered on a
> military battlefield.
The great danger of the military metaphor, of course, is that it
suggests a symmetry in class struggle. One army is essentially the same as
another. It is crucially important (as I'm sure you'll agree) to see that
class struggle is asymmetrical, that our struggle is not the mirror image of
capital's. Hence the critique of political economy, the impossibility of a
Marxist economics.
John
----------
>From: gerald_a_levy <gerald_a_levy@msn.com>
>To: ope-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu
>Subject: [OPE-L:7023] [Harry Cleaver] Re: a boring question (for John H
and others)
>Date: Fri, Apr 19, 2002, 7:48 AM
>
>> On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, gerald_a_levy wrote:
>>
>> > > >What should be noted, though, connecting with something you wrote
>> > > >in [6877], is that *economics* (by which I mean here, bourgeois or
>> > > >'mainstream' economic theory) *is* boring. And this should be a
>> > > >significant conclusion of the critique of economics: i.e. it inverts
>what
>> > > >should be the vitally-important and fascinating comprehension of how
>> > > >systems of production, distribution, and exchange and class struggle
>> > > >impact peoples' lives into an eminently boring -- and trivial --
>subject.
>> > >
>> > > I agree completely.
>>
>> I don't. For many years I have confronted this tendency on the part of
>> student critics of capitalism, especially Marxist students, to complain
>> about mainstream economics being boring and trivial and not worth the
>> trouble. During this time I have argued the following: while there are a
>> lot of boring technical details, especially as the profession sought more
>> and more sophisticated mathematics to accomplish more or less the same
>> things as in the past, in general the study of mainstream economics should
>> be taken on as an essential exercise in class espionage. Mainstream
>> economics is not just ideology and not just wrong; it is a key component
>> of capitalist strategy and is used to devise tactics against the rest of
>> us. To think that the enemy's thinking is boring and trivial is to risk
>> not taking it seriously and not learning to read it strategically and thus
>> not understanding the strategies and tactics being used against you.
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