Gassler Robert wrote:
Susan Feiner has a wonderful article on how economic man is just a Freudian infant. The child wants everything in sight ("unlimited wants") and mother(the "free market") nurses him whenever he wants. Feiner, Susan. 1999. “A Portrait of Homo Economicus as a Young Man,” Woodmansee, Martha and Mark Osteen, eds. 1999. The New Economic Criticism: Studies in the Intersection of Literature and Economics. London and New York: Routledge. Chapter 9, pp.193-209.
Thanks for the reference. I want to add that this portrait has a real foundation in capitalism and that mainstream economic theory captures bits of that foundation. "The bourgeoisie ... has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment.'" The neoclassicals see (but don't understand) this essential characteristic of capitalism. Marx and Engles are correct when they write that "The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation." And Gary Becker can then apply neoclassical tools to modern family relations such that "they are understandable to the popular mind" (Marx, Vol. III). Anyway, Neoclassical theory is not just some kind of mythology. I think Marx was on to something when he wrote in volume III "Vulgar economy actually does no more than interpret, systematise and defend in doctrinaire fashion the conceptions of the agents of bourgeois production who are entrapped in bourgeois production relations." Sure it does not no more than this, but it also does this. I would take this line of argument one step further. As the neoclassical interpretations change (the behaviorists, information economics, transaction cost economics and so forth), these changes are a reflection of changes in bourgeois production relations. And for that reason, like Marx found it useful to study classical theory in order to understand capitalist processes, it is useful to study neoclassical theory too.