Re: [OPE] question re published letters Engels

I agree with Jurriaan on substance here, but I wish he would drop
calling people "the New Marxist Exploiting Class", since it does only
distract the debate.

Juriaan has been on the list for years, always very interesting
contributions, so I urge him to stay.

Regarding people like Bettelheim, Althusser - you did not have to
work on their farm even in the seventies. The dogmatic rigidity of
their thinking was clearly visible already at that time. But many of
us were young and looked to this "older" generation with more respect
than they actually deserved.

Mostly our fault, partly theirs. As years passed and they did not get
more concrete - and as JB points out - their points of view on
important issues changed as in the case of Bettelheim - not in itself
a bad thing - but without the change being "mediated" - the dogmatic,
scholastic character of these approaches became obvious.

Today I cannot see anyone trying to achieve guru status - or being
given guru status. It is quite obvious that Marxist Economics is on
the defensive, that we have a many unresolved basic problems, and not
the least lot of work to do to connect - and correct - the abstract
thinking/models according to "stylized facts".

But invective will only distract us.

Regards
Anders Ekeland.

_______________________________________________
ope mailing list
ope@lists.csuchico.edu
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/ope
Received on Wed May 13 03:09:41 2009