From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Tue Feb 06 2007 - 11:14:40 EST
> "I have been primarily a theorist all my life and feel quite uncomfortable > in having to preach the historians faith. Yet I have arrived at the > conclusion that theoretical equipment, if uncomplemented by a thorough > grounding in the history of the economic process, is worse than no theory > at all." Hi Jurriaan: I agree, but: -- how thorough a grounding is sufficiently thorough? -- what is the "historians faith"? Faith in what? -- he doesn't specify _why_ it would be better to have no theory at all than theory which is uninformed by history. Evidently he feels that there is a real _danger_ to such abstract ahistorical theorizing, but he doesn't draw out the specifics of the danger. Was the danger for Schumpeter the possible ideological uses of such a theory to rationalize exploitive and oppressive relations by those in power? In solidarity, Jerry
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