Alan, the best way to answer your comment, I believe, is to insert my 
comments below yours in sequence. Before I begin, perhaps I should 
explain a bit more of my interpretation of Frey's report.

Turpin's argument, as reported by Frey, is that if human beings were to 
ever live under a system of pure capitalism ("Smith's ideal economy"), 
their values would be shaped in such a way that they would eventually 
come to neglect the principles of distributive justice. He interprets 
Friedman as having been greatly influence of the capitalist system that 
has prevailed to some extent in the recent two to three centuries. 
Fortunately for civilization, as Turpin sees it, pure capitalism never 
prevailed. Principles of distributive justice survived.

At the heart of Turpin's thesis, it seems to me, is that the logic that 
human beings employ to interpret history and to make policy 
recommendations depend on the extent to which pure capitalism prevails.  
His thesis may be broader than this but I could only glean this part 
from the report. To be consistent, according to my interpretation, he 
would have to argue that in the Utopian communal system, the principles 
of commutative justice would tend to disappear.

Expanding this line of argument, it seemed to me that he was saying that 
each type of SOCIETY would tend to have its own logic. This is the basis 
for my reference to polylogism. It is similar to the Marxist polylogism 
to which I referred, in which each CLASS has its own logic.

How is this related to Marx? My answer is that Marx believed that 
thought is determined by class interest and that the economics of Smith 
was bourgeois economics. See the reference below. How is Marxism related 
to racism?  The racists argued that thought is determined by race.

All these theses are related in that they deny the possibility of a 
universally valid science of market interaction. In this sense, they are 
all distractions from the teachings of the classical and early 
neoclassical economists about how a government can help cause mountains 
of consumer goods to be produced.


On 6/8/2011 6:07 PM, Alan G Isaac wrote:
> Despite Roy's fears of how the discussion will evolve,
> I do wonder what Mises was talking about.
>  http://mises.org/humanaction/chap3sec2.asp
> Was he just getting away with murder by calling "Marxian"
> anything vaguely to the "left" that he felt smacked of
> polylogism?  Or is there textual evidence that Marx
> seriously argued for polylogism?
>
> Just to be clear, I do not consider that an argument
> that behavior (including argument) is influenced by
> ideology amounts to an argument for polylogism.
> Mises does seem to conflate the two
> http://mises.org/humanaction/chap3sec3.asp
> Perhaps someonoe can prvide context for why he would
> feel justified in doing so.

If you are interested in Mises's interpretation of Marx, let me suggest 
that you consult Mises's SOCIALISM, which is the best place to look for 
page references relating to Mises's interpretation of Marx. The index to 
Marx contains a very large number of items. Unfortunately, the 
references are to German publications.
http://mises.org/books/socialism.pdf

I don't follow your statement about a conflation of terms. I think you 
have misinterpreted Mises, but you will have to give me a bit more to go on.

>
> Would it be reasonable to say that Mises underlying
> concern was that Marx's analysis of how certain economic
> ideas might proliferate and find support *due to* their
> contribution to system legitimation could be (and has been)
> mistaken for a reason to discard these ideas?  This
> really has nothing to do with polylogism, afaics.

I am not sure what you mean by "certain economic ideas" Mises's 
underlying concern was with the attack on what you probably would call 
"free market economics" and on the propensity for people who might 
otherwise learn this economics to be distracted by Marx and his 
followers. Marxian polylogism, in this context, was his label for the 
Marxian view that "class interest determines thought." I was under the 
impression that this Marxian view was well known. I recall learning it 
long before I studied Mises.

http://mises.org/books/socialism/part3_ch21.aspx

>
> Additionally, Mises's apparent claim that we should
> be puzzled by the idea that a false belief could serve
> us better than a true belief appears truly naive.
>   http://mises.org/humanaction/chap3sec3.asp
> (It has often been to believe in ideas conflicting with the
> dominant ideology in so many places and times, and pretended
> belief serves less well than reflexive belief in many
> circumstances.)

The passage you describe is an attack on the logic of the Marxian 
argument that the objectively false ideology of the bourgeois class 
serves the interests of that class.  If I understand you correctly, you 
believe that a false ideology could serve that interest. Can you give an 
example of how this could occur?

>
> Finally, as a tiny test Marx vs. Mises in the understanding of
> ideology and property, I wonder if it is useful to consider
> the recent evolution of intellectual property law --
> bought and paid for in the copyright industries and oddly more
> resistant in the patent industries, but promoted
> always through well-funded and rather successful
> efforts to persuade us all that (contrary to the Constitution,
> in the US) creators are not granted a social privilege of temporary
> monopoly but rather have a natural right to every last penny that might
> possibly be squeezed out of a creative idea, from here to eternity.

Sounds like a blog.

>
> Thanks,
> Alan Isaac
>
>

-- 
Pat Gunning
Professor of Economics
Melbourne, Florida
http://www.nomadpress.com/gunning/welcome.htm