>>CB: Think about it. To admit that macroeconomics can be understood scientifically is to admit that there can be macroeconomic planning, ie. centralized planning, that Hayek is wrong. So, the bourgeoisie are always going to be leery of a prize for the science of economics. This contradiction also must doom the project of every school of bourgeois, i.e. "free market", economics to "fail" or else it undermines free market ideology.<<
Perhaps, but not necessarily. This is why the Vienna line of economists emphasize 'logic'. They think they are tapping into some sort of subsistent realm and providing a picture that captures the reality. So according to a lot of thinkers following on Hayek, markets are rational because they encompass the totality of economic activity and express a 'collective will'. What the market does is rational, even if it doesn't make sense to an individual businessman, ponzi schemer, duped investor or academic economist. I don't buy recent arguments that the advent of supercomputers will result in our ability to model sufficiently in order to 'see all'. I'm still waiting for a three day extended weather forecast that is actually correct. I think the debate of public vs. private is largely irrelevant here. The question is more along the lines of on what scale can you undertake economic planning and business. The calamities of the US's occupation of Iraq shows both the calamities of central planning and the 'magic of the markets'. Of course Hayek would look at recent financial events and see them as a rational change, a rational collective action of the market, I guess. As for being anti-science, as the paper that started this thread states, anti-science has often been associated with post-mo Marxists--literary Marxists and social theorists (although I disagree and don't seem them following mainly from Althusser). That potential was always there in the thought of Marx himself. Which brings us back to a recurring but much larger debate: is there such thing as a social science? Will there be a body of thought that unifies the various 'soft sciences' (social, psycho-, logico-formal--such as formal linguistics-- etc.)? Will there be a body of thought that ultimately unifies the social sciences with the natural sciences, etc? I tend to take an anti-scientific stance in the fields that affect me the most--applied linguistics, second language acquisition, language education, education, etc. This often gets me backed into a corner with the children of the romantics, but for me it is more a stance of rationalism--destroy all pseudo-sciences and their various forms of oppression. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
