me:
> > BTW, at least in economics, Marxists don't have a very coherent
> > paradigm. Maybe comprehensive, but not coherent. It's like Beirut in
> > the 1970s...
Sean:
> But it seems to me that the Marxist approach, if it can really be
> described as such, is bascially to take a comprehensive view of
> orthodox economics, to show that, from a comprehensive view, it is not
> coherent, but instead full of contradictions.
I don't think Marxian political economics is just "the critique of
[bourgeois] political economy" (though that view is popular). Marx and
his followers present an alternative (or try to do so). Critique is a
step toward that alternative.
To me, the valid parts of neoclassical/orthodox economics (essentially
supply & demand, but there's more) are components of the broader
Marxian approach. The micro (S & D) stuff works as a way to understand
the fluctuations of prices and the like, but micro-theory is by its
very nature subject to the fetishism of commodities. Thus, we need a
macro political economy approach as a complementary part of the whole.
That deals with the structure and dynamics ("laws of motion") of class
societies, especially capitalism. Macro cannot be reduced to micro --
nor can micro be "reduced" to being a mere epiphenomenon of the macro
totality. There's a dialectic between micro and macro, occurring
through real-world, historical, time. (That's a larger totality.)
(The neoclassicals have only theories using logical (abstract) time
(which is easily reversible). They lack an understanding of
uncertainty, etc. They cling to the comparative statics method, which
is woefully inadequate.)
By the way, one of my favorite neoclassical theories is one that the
neoclassicals themselves actively shun (which is a clear signal of the
ideological content of their vision). That is the concept of
"pecuniary externalities." External costs are not just a matter of
pollution and the like. Costs can be dumped on others via markets
(prices, etc.) Marx's theory of exploitation can be thought of in
those terms. The money power of the capitalists (and the separation of
the workers from ownership or control of the means of production and
subsistence) puts the working class at a power disadvantage, so that
(most of) the latter signs up voluntarily to be exploited by the
capitalists. (This is a case of a pecuniary externality, working
through markets to shift costs to workers and benefits to the cappos.)
Of course, the actual exploitation takes place in production (and not
in exchange), a topic that neoclassicals don't like dealing with.
(Roemer's old neoclassical/wannabe-Marxian theory of exploitation --
before he escaped into normative matters -- is all about the
exchange/market end of things (though he didn't seem to know about
pecuniary externalities at all). He followed the lead of his Walrasian
masters to ignore production.)
> This is particularly the case in the way orthodox economics is pasted
> loosely onto the other ideologies that come out of the Enlightenment
> tradition, such that they appear to be the same thing. The only thing
> that makes the Austrians appear coherent is that they basically assume
> there are no contradictions here AND that in so far as anyone believes
> that there are, it is because of some massive propaganda campaign by
> villainous Socialists who simply deceive the masses with alternative
> views of reality: there is, in other words, no basis in material
> relations or enlightenment philosophy for this critique. It's just
> bad PR. Admittedly, this is also a problem with many of the Western
> Marxist critiques, but these are constituted precisely as non-economic
> theories of society and culture at large.
Right. But the Austrians are "heterodox," as are flat-earthers and UFO
fans. Being heterodox doesn't automatically mean you're right in
sense of the word. (Similarly, the orthodox are sometimes right.)
> But maybe I don't know what you mean by Marxist economics. I think
> that Aglietta's "Theory of Capitalist Regulation" is pretty coherent
> as an alternative description of post-war US capitalism, even if he
> did chicken out a few years later.
I think his work has been superseded by that of Duménil and Lévy. They
are much more empirically-oriented, while their math is better.
> And he's hardly a Marxist
> economist per se, he just tried to turn some of the basic arguments of
> _Capital_ into an scheme of equations that would be recognizable to
> more traditional economists.
I didn't see an effort to communicate with the orthodox when I read his book.
BTW, I don't want to say stuff like "he's hardly a Marxist economist
per se." It's not like Marxian political economy is a club, with
membership requirements, secret handshakes, etc. Though obviously
they have happened, there should never be expulsions.
> But this wasn't really the innovation in
> that method, which involved trying to describe the mode of
> regulation--i.e. the ideological and consumption oriented
> supports--that make capitalism sustainable over the long term. In
> this, his theory tries to be both more comprehensive and more
> coherent. Maybe it's not seen as relevant to the "real" economics
> profession or maybe it's not seen as Marxist.
Most -- except sectarians, I guess -- would see Aglietta's stuff as
Marxist, even if we see it as incomplete, wrong, or whatever. It's
clear that some sort of historically-specific institutional framework
must be considered along with the abstract "laws of motion." The old
stand-by was the theory of stages of capitalist development. Aglietta
and the "regulationists" simply had a new understanding of stages, as
did the SSA crowd (if it still exists).
> In any case, I'm not sure what is except if we are talking about state
> planning oriented theories, which one could only tenuously describe as
> Marxist.
right. Planning theory is something else. Marxian P.E. is about class
societies (especially capitalism). Non-class societies are discussed
basically as a way of contrasting with class society. How to _run_ a
non-class society (or a class society like the late USSR) is outside
of Marxian P.E. That doesn't mean that we should ignore that topic,
but it's a different problematic.
> Maybe the work of people in the journal Re-Thinking Marxism
> would apply, but I haven't read enough of their work to know if they
> would apply as Marxist economists.
Again, there should be no membership cards. (but maybe armbands? ;-) )
That said, the Rethinking Marxism folks always seemed better at
criticizing Marxian P.E. (an important thing to do) than they are at
presenting an alternative, either within or outside of the broad
Marxian tradition.
> Which, perhaps brings up the
> question of how you define an economist as much as it does how you
> define a Marxist.
see above.
--
Jim Devine / "The truth is at once less sinister and more dangerous."
-- Naomi Klein.
