>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?

I think that this is a little unfair to the PoMos in that a lot of them see
individual "preferences" as socially conditioned, wherease neoclassicals
see them as exogenously determined and beyond scientific analysis. Most
PoMos would reject any pretentions of being scientific, too. 

On the other hand, when I read Wolf & Resnick, I got the distinct
impression that their main message was that "everything depends on
everything else" which is the tautological message of neoclassical general
equilibrium theory, too. 

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html



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