----- Original Message ----- From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Ian writes: > Gotta say I love the use multiple uses of "....." Well, it's referring to others' language, so quotation marks seem quite appropriate. (I wouldn't use the word "natural" the way Marx did, by the way.) > I could say a lot more but I'm not interested in risking indeterminate regresses of potential misinterpretation regarding KM's rhetoric.< It's sad that theoretical terms and concepts have been reduced to being interpreted as mere rhetoric, following Deidre McCloskey's lead to treat all economics and political economics as works of literature and rhetoric. (The relevant definitions from the on-line "hyperdictionary" are: (1) loud and confused and empty talk; "mere rhetoric"; (2) high flown style; excessive use of verbal ornamentation; (3) using language effectively to please or persuade.) If theory is rejected as rhetoric, what do we have left? Empiricism? JD ----- Well, the term mere rhetoric applied to itself creates problems for those who want to denigrate mere rhetoric, no? One need not subscribe to DM's thinking on rhetoric to understand that there is a lot of rhetoric in economic discourse. Who gets to determine what counts as confused and empty talk when there are multiple interpretations of events, institutions, idioms etc.? To denigrate rhetoric is self-defeating and, perhaps worse, serves as an example of ineloquent rhetoric. Marxists would do well to examine more carefully the uses of synecdoche, metonymy, metaphor and other rhetorical practices in KM's work; the hair-splitting over the various formalizations of his later work have outlived their usefulness to those not in the academy. That is not to denigrate the careful and excellent work of those who have formalized those aspects of his work that were formalizable.
