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In an interesting post,   Fred Carstensen wrote: 
>  
> IMHO, Marx's tripartate theory of personality (like Freud's) is much 
> more interesting than his economics, 
 
This surprised me. 
1. Because Geert Reuten & I (Value-Form and the State: ...,  
Routledge, 1989, Ch.7.1) very tentatively speculated about a  
Hegel-Marx tripartite theory of the modern psyche - rational economic  
agent, citizen and private person. We felt it was tentative and  
speculative largely because we did not think it had been developed  
before - and certainly not in Marx (although that is where we found  
the elements that we synthesized). 
2. Because we - following the more Hegel-influenced parts of Marx -  
developed the theory of the bourgeois psyche from a development of  
Marx's account of the economy and the polity, plus our own brief  
account of the, essentially residual, 'private sphere. Thus (very  
schematically) the diremption of bourgeois society into capitalist  
economy, (typically liberal-democratic) polity and the private sphere  
(the last refuge of 'humanity ...?) was reflected in the tripartite  
fragmentation of the bourgeois psyche. 
 
Fred went on: 
> and his concept of alienation 
> has far more analytic insight. 
 
Again I am puzzled by the 'either/or' implication. Surely Marx's  
theory of alienation is intimately connected both with his critique  
of political economy (witness most obviously the development of  
fetishism in Section 4 of Ch. I of Volume One of *Capital*, on  
Commodities); and with the suggested concept of the fragmented  
bourgeois personality. 
 
Fred again: 
>  Like Scitovsky, Marx tried to bring 
> psychology into the understanding of economic behavior--with about as 
> much success. 
 
wrt Marx, this, if I understand it aright, is a misreading. Marx is  
concerned almost entirely with the effects of socioeconomic anomie  
on classes, rather than on the socioeconomic effects of the individual  
psyche (although, of course, orders of determination are tricky in a  
dialectical conceptualization ...). 
 
wrt to Scitovsky, I'm afraid my education is sadly lacking here.  
Could Fred perhaps indicate briefly how S. tried to introduce  
psychology into the understanding of economic behaviour, and in what  
lay his implied failure? (If this is not the appropriate forum,  
perhaps Fred - or someone else - could feed me a starter reference?)  
 
[EDITOR'S NOTE: See Tibor Scitovsky, The Joyless Economy.] 
 
Dr Michael Williams  
Department of Economics 
School of Social Sciences 
De Montfort University 
 
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