Friends, In a review of "In Defence of History: Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda" (edited by Ellen Wood and John Foster, Monthly Review 1997), economics professor, Yanis Varoufakis of the Univ. of Sydney, says, "Come to think of it, the asymptotic limit of postmodern fragmentation is the neoclassical general equilibrium economic model. In both cases, the only admissible social explanation springs from differences in preferences (and if identities are freely chosen, in identities) which are constructed in such a manner that they ban any comparison across persons. As for social relations, these are reduced to interplay, voluntarism and exchange. Freedom is defined in negative terms, and structural exploitation is axiomatically rendered meaningless. Above all else, both neoclassicism and postmodernity espouse a radical egalitarianism that is founded in the rejection of any standard by which the claims of one group (or one person) are more deserving than those of another. Moreover, both fail to provide a principle that promotes, in the context of their radical egalitarianism, respect for the other's difference or utility. If indeed postmodernity is analytically indistinguishable (at least in the limit) from neoclassical economic method, is there any doubt about this book's pertinence? After all, the whole purpose underpinning the emergence of the neoclassical economic project, at a time when Marx's "Capital" was beginning to bite, was to rid economics initially, and social science later, of history." What do list members think of this? michael yates
