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This is a reply to Michael Williams comment on my throw away remarks on
Marxism. It is tangential to the main issues under discussion.
My remark that Marxism is Whiggish in Ross Emmett's sense was aimed at
the history of economics as done by Marxists, and was not a general
comment on Marxist economics. It is, however, surely true that Marxists
are sustained by a belief in the inevitability of future socialism,
however vague that belief may be. That is a mainstream Marxist tenet,
isn't it? My concern, however, was with the history of economics as
done by Marxists. Taken out of context, that wasn't clear in what I
wrote.
Marx was wholly Whiggish in his (very extensive) writings on the
history of economics. He constructed a story with himself at the apex
and judged writers by their contribution to the line of thought that
led up to his own writings. Those he judged to have deviated from the
true path he subjected to violent, ignorant and unprincipled abuse
(e.g. as 'vulgar' economists). His followers continue the tradition.
Marxist influenced Sraffians, neo-Ricardians and the like should be
added. How much has been written which praises Classical economics (and
Marx himself) for using a concept of surplus while making little
attempt to set it in the context of its own time? That is the Whiggish
tradition I had in mind. For a very recent example (a substantial,
scholarly work, I hasten to say) see Tony Aspromourgos's 'Origins of
Classical Economics', which tries to construct a line of descent
running all the way from Petty to Sraffa.
Much, not all, modern Marxist writing about Marx himself, though
Whiggish in a general sense, tends to fall into a different error, that
of arguing that Marx said x therefore x is true and simultaneously that
x is true, therefore Marx must have intended x, even if he didn't say
it. This is not an interpretation of history, but its obliteration. I
have read (alas) many papers in which arguments for (say) using a
labour theory of value are mixed up with discussion of Marx's
intentions with absolutely no sense of history or context at all (now
I'm the one arguing for taking context seriously!).
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Tony Brewer ([log in to unmask])
University of Bristol, Department of Economics
8 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TN, England
Phone (+44/0)117 928 8428
Fax (+44/0)117 928 8577
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