After Paul’s suggestions from JEL, I read Perelman’s review of Brenner’s book and kept reading the next one (on C. Gorga’s The Economic Process…) without realizing that it was by P. Davidson until the end.
Re. Perelman’s review I’d say that it is very informative and friendly, as it should be --'a fine review' as Paul said. After all how often a radical book is reviewed in JEL. I also discovered that (excuse my ignorance) Perelman is in complete agreement with the Brenner’s analysis of the US crisis, a wage squeeze approach. I hope I am not exaggerating. I find Davidson’s review exactly opposite of Perelman’s, i.e. uninformative and hostile, while being another expression of Keynesology. It is also revealing in terms of what Davidson thinks about alternative theories (“paradigms”). In order to say ‘this book makes no sense’ Davidson needed Keynes’s review of Hayek’s book (1931) where Keynes labeled the book as “one of the most frightful muddles..” The most revealing part of the review, however, is the part where Davidson shares his disapproval (distaste) of the Gorga’s book: Davidson apparently was speechless vis-à-vis the lacking quality (or as he put it he couldn’t say anything about the book because Gorga “utilizes economic terms to mean different things than is commonly accepted by economists.” So, you’d better write books with “commonly accepted terminology if you expect to be reviewed (with no hostility) by Davidson-likes in JEL. Dogmatism, I always thought, is unique to us! Ahmet Tonak > Thanks for the interesting review (and tip). People may wish to know that > the article is in the latest edition of the Journal of Economic Literature > which also has a fine review of Brenner's book 'Boom and Bubble' by our > own > Michael Perelman (thanks Michael). > Paul
