At 8:32 AM 1/13/95 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Evan Jones writes: >> ... The character, fate of GM, IBM >> or any other real-life business entity, big or small, is of >> absolutely no consequence to neoclassical economics. This herculean >> detachment is what gives NC economics its elegance and its longevity. > >It strikes me that one could say the same thing about Marxian >economics. Its criticism of capitalism stands independently of the >rise or fall of any particular "real-life entity". On this score >recall Marx's comment in his preface to the first German edition of >_Capital_: "...here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they >are the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of >particular class-relations and class interests." Yeah but Marx immersed himself in the details of his day to discover what those essential relations and interests were/are. I see extensive quotations from parliamentary reports, testimony, The Economist, popular and scholarly tracts and treatises.... No dialectician would develop theory in the pure abstract realm. Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA 212-874-4020 voice 212-874-3137 fax