Re: [OPE-L] axioms in political economy

From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Thu May 10 2007 - 10:40:21 EDT


Hi Ajit:

I agree that perspectives on value -- and political economy in general
-- which depend on axioms are problematic.  From a history of thought
perspective, I believe the axiomatic method insinuated itself into
discourse on economics at part of the modern trend towards mathematical
formalizations of economic theory.

In solidarity, Jerry

 ____________________
> By *axiom* one generally understands something like:
> self evidently ture. Thus it does not need any
> justification or argument to rest on. In the context
> of *value*, the main problem is that nobody
> understands what it means. If you have five Marxists
> in a room, you will have at least 25 different
> meanings of the word *value*--i.e. on the average
> every Marxist holds five different meaning of value.
> What you call above an *axiom* is not an axiom but
> rather one particular *definition* of value (or rather
> part of a definition of value). In other words, it is
> asserted to be so by definition but that does not mean
> that it is self evidently true.


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu May 31 2007 - 00:00:08 EDT