I don't see any problem with a theory that seeks underlying causes and then points out that there can be countervailing tendencies. Marx himself and every scientist makes the same overall kind of analysis. The MR analysis, for example, says that what we must explain is the one and one half generation of white working class prosperity in the US after WW2. That is the exception to the rule. Even in the Scandinavian countries, Keynesian prosperity was not sustainable. Why?
The social structure of accumulation model always seemed and after the fact hodgepodge to me. I was on the RRPE editorial board for quite a few years. I used to dread reading ridiculously long essays, aimed mainly at padding the writer's CV, since the journal had that magical cachet: peer reviewed (Often a real joke, since the peers often had axes to grind). Long detailed models, entailing the employment of suspect variables, suspect supporting data, suspect algebra, etc. It often seemed to me to be gigantic wastes of effort. Meanwhile, which economists ever concerned themselves with actually writing with and for the working class, and teaching them directly. Not a single UMass-Amherst, haven for radical economists, professor ever offered to teach in the labor education program run there every January and July. Of course not! The college was on hiatus in January, and the profs had places to go and people to meet. I ran a column in the RRPE that included popular pieces aimed at a general audience. When I left, no one continued this. My professor and friend, David Houston, a really good man, who suffered greatly for his radicalism at the U. of Pittsburgh, used to make me laugh with his stories of the elitism of our "star" radical economists. This was so evident at the URPE conferences I attended. Kind of made me sick. Believe me, when you rise out of the heart of the working class, you are not met with welcoming arms by the academics, not matter their politics. I will tell you who welcomed me: Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy. And many others, including Istvan Meszaros, Daniel Singer, Annette Rubinstein. I spent a term as a visitor at UMass. The luminaries there deigned to speak to me once. But never an invite for a beer, dinner. Nothing. Finally, the MR people have kept the Baran-Sweezy analysis alive, with plenty of data and good analyses. And they have incorporated the environmental crises into the analysis. Can any of the radical left-liberal economists say the same? Can anyone imagine any of them, without exception writing something like John Foster's Return of Nature? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#5806): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/5806 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/80077757/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
