[Looks like Nicholas is going to help clear up James' "bleeding heart" reference! HB]   
  
  
Ein bleeding heart oder ein bezahlte Klopffechter?  
  
First a point regarding Marx's invective. In the Afterword to the second  
German edition of the 1st vol of Capital, he certainly does not call Ricardo  
or JS Mill "hired prize fighters" [bezahlte Klopffechterei, a Klopffechter  
is someone who fences to get money for the show as opposed to a true  
Fechtmeister].  
  
On the contrary he talks about the death knell of scientific bourgeois  
political economy.  Marx never doubted Ricardo as a scientist.  In the same  
passage, Marx explicitly excludes Mill from those who are hired prize  
fighters.  He writes: "Men who still claimed some scientific standing and  
aspired to be something more than mere sophists and sycophants of the  
ruling-classes tried to harmonise the Political Economy of capital with the  
claims, no longer to be ignored, of the proletariat. Hence a shallow  
[geistloser] syncretism of which John Stuart Mill is the best  
representative."  
  
The question is not that of attributing bad or cynical motives or a bleeding  
heart, for that matter, to those who hold a different view. I will not hold  
Newton responsible if a break my leg. It is not even a question of normative  
vs positive science. [we are all wertfrei scientists now]   The question is  
whether the definition of economics as a science of choice is either  
relevant or theoretically fruitful.  And I believe it is not.  
  
Nicholas J. Theocarakis