Spirito di Bergamo

Alan Freeman (a.freeman@greenwich.ac.uk)
Mon, 19 Jan 1998 19:57:23 +0000

riccardo bellofiore wrote:

> Another consequence of my view was that Marxists had to
> engage in a dialogue, and had to *learn*, from (strictly speaking)
> NON-Marxists authors who were, I thought, interested to similar points.

> Hence I invited Postkeynesians (Wray), Keynesians (Sardoni),
> Kaleckian (Halevi & Kriesler), Monetary circuit theorists (Graziani; with
> some qualification also Benetti & Cartelier), New Keynesians (Messori),
> Institutionalist (Screpanti), quasi-Austrians (Meacci), historians of
> economic thought (Faccarello, Guidi), and even Sraffians (Schefold, Kurz,
> Screpanti again).

> 2. Future prospects for OPE-L. I refer here to Alan's proposal: invite the
> other 21. Well, the names I made in point 1 are not interested to a project
> like OPE-L. [The only exception may be Screpanti, who would present himself
> also as a Marxist].

Hum, I agree it is a salutory thing for Marxists to listen to non-Marxists,
though best done on an equal footing, so that the non-Marxists also listen
to Marx [Otherwise we get the sound of one non-Marxist clapping].

I assume (or they would not have come to the conference) that you selected
people who were willing to give at least some consideration to Marx, even
though they don't agree with him.

So here's the next question (and this is the 'serious' aspect of 'invite
the other 21'): why do you think they aren't they interested in a project
like OPE-L?

Is it because they don't talk to us -- or because we don't talk to them?

If there is a basis for a dialogue (and I think there is) then it seems to
me in the 'spirit of Bergamo' that the Marxists should discuss non-Marx
and the non-Marxists should discuss Marx.

Are we assuming that only Marxists are invited onto OPE? Or are we assuming
that non-Marxists won't want to join? Can either assumption be questioned,
even a little bit?

Alan