Carrol,
I don't know how you expect me to label this
particular passage. Clearly Marx dealt with history,
philosophy, and sociology, along with political economy,
at a minimum. But then many of the political economists
of his day were more broadly based than they are today,
e.g. David Hume, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill (I
know, Hume and Smith were a century earlier).
Of course nobody int the English language tradition
even spoke of "economists" during Marx's lifetime. They
were all "political economists." Germans such as Karl
Heinrich Rau had begun to use the term as early as the
1830s and Walras in France was using it as of the 1870s,
with others perhaps earlier. But in the English language
tradition I think it was Alfred Marshall starting clearly with
his _Principles of Economics_ in 1890 who initiated the
concept of an "economist" rather than a "political economist."
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Carrol Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Friday, December 01, 2000 5:31 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:5312] Re: Re: Re: Norm's reading list
>
>
>"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote:
>
>> Carrol,
>> How about "political economist"?
>
>Certainly much better than "economist," though by "critique of
>political economy" Marx meant, I believe, to show from inside
>political economy that it was necessarily incoherent, and that
>that incoherence flowed from the historical actuality of the
>mode of production that political economy assumed was the
>only natural mode of production.
>
>However that may be, it seems to me that one of the absolutely
>key passages in Marx's work is the following. Does the term
>"political economy" fit it?
>
>Carrol
>
>****
>Thus *Providence* is the locomotive which makes the whole of M.
>Proudhon's economic baggage move better than his pure and
>volatilised reason. He has devoted to Providence a whole chapter, which
>follows the one on taxes.
>
> Providence, providential aim, this is the great word used today to
>explain the movement of history. In fact, this word explains nothing.
>It is at most a rhetorical form, one of the various ways of paraphrasing
>facts.
>
> It is a fact that in Scotland landed property acquired a new value
>by the development of English industry. This industry opened up new
>outlets for wool. In order to produce wool on a large scale, arable
>land had to be transformed into pasturage. To effect this
>transformation, the estates had to be concentrated. To concentrate
>the estates, small holdings had first to be abolished, thousands of
>tenants had to be driven from their native soil and a few shepherds
>in charge of millions of sheep to be installed in their place. Thus,
>by successive transformations, landed property in Scotland has
>resulted in the driving out of men by sheep.
>
>Now say that the providential aim of the institution of landed property
>in Scotland was to have men driven out by sheep, and you will have
>made providential history.
>
> Of course, the tendency towards equality belongs to our century. To
>say now that all former centuries, with entirely different needs, means
>of production, etc., worked providentially for the realisation of
>equality is, firstly, to substitute the means and the men of our century
>for the men and the means of earlier centuries and to misunderstand the
>historical movement by which the successive generations transformed the
>results acquired by the generations that preceded them. Economists know
>very well that the very thing that was for the one a finished product
>was for the other but the raw material for new production.
>
> Suppose, as M. Proudhon does, that social genius produced, or
>rather improvised, the feudal lords with the providential aim of
>transforming the *settlers* into *responsible* and *equally-placed*
>workers: and you will have effected a substitution of aims and of
>persons worthy of the Providence that instituted landed property in
>Scotland, in order to give itself the malicious pleasure of driving
>out men by sheep.
>
> But since M. Proudhon takes such a tender interest in Providence,
>we refer him to the *Histoire de l'economie politique* of M. de
>Villenneuve-Bargemont, who likewise goes in pursuit of a providential
>aim. This aim, however, is not equality, but catholicism.
> *Pov. Phil* (Moscow, 1973), pp. 104-105
>
>
>
