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.
