[OPE-L:3665] RE: Operationalization of Marxian theory

Gerald Lev (glevy@pratt.edu)
Wed, 13 Nov 1996 20:44:48 -0800 (PST)

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Duncan wrote in [OPE-L:3661]:

> In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Marxist economics was at the
> center of the most important political economic thinking going:
> imperialism, underconsumption, finance capital, the transformation of
> capitalism to socialism, the evolution and development of capitalism on a
> world scale, to mention a few areas. On this list, just to take an example,
> we don't hear very much about substantive research on larger political
> economic issues, [...]

More big questions:

1) Weren't those debates an outgrowth of workers' movements themselves and
didn't they reflect important political differences among Marxists in
countries that had strong mass Social Democratic and revolutionary parties
and traditions? Today, most researchers are academics and theorists rather
than revolutionaries. Hasn't the academic environment itself had an effect
on what we research, how we conduct research, and how we write and who can
understand what we write?

2) What do you (and others on the list) view as the "larger political
economic issues" that *should be* discussed and developed?

3) [For any who answer #2], why haven't we, as Marxists (not only on the
list but elsewhere as well), allocated more time and effort developing
answers to these "larger political economic issues"?

In solidarity,

Jerry