Samuelson’s “heroic abstraction” was simply that: a substitution of his fertile (and ultimately misleading) imagination for what classical and (early) neoclassical monetary analysis really was. They did not assume that we live forever or that we’re “perfect competitors.” You may confirm their own analyses from David Hume’s (1752) essays, “Of Money,” “Of Interest,” and “Of The Balance of Trade,” Adam Smith’s monetary analysis other than in his long chapter on Money and Banking in the Wealth of Nations, David Ricardo’s Principles, John Stuart Mill’s Principles, Alfred Marshall’s “Money, Credit, and Commerce,” A. C. Pigou’s Industrial Fluctuations, and Frank Taussig’s Principles.

James Ahiakpor 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jun 14, 2023, at 12:42 AM, Felipe Sousa <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Dear Colleagues,
> 
> This is my first message to the forum, for which I am unsure about sending it but inspired by the long thread on "valuation and the theory of measurement" and the helpful comments, I decided to give it a go.
> 
> I would like to hear from any of you some commentary on Samuelson's paper 'What Classical and neo-classical monetary theory really was', especially the section titled "The Way Things Are", which, in my reading, was necessary for him to demonstrate the "ergodic axiom". The paragraph starts with, "I abstract heroically. We are all exactly alike. We live for ever. We are perfect competitors and all-but-perfect soothsayers."
> 
> The paper was first published in the Canadian Journal of Economics, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-15. 
> The version I got was reprinted in the "Monetary Theory" collection (1969), edited by Clower.
> 
> I am aware that there has always been a dissatisfaction, even if suppressed, with how the economic science was built up, but I take Samuelson's "abstraction" as an extreme case.
> 
> What it amounts to is a God-like supposition. What amazes me the most is that Samuelson concluded that his agents would still be value producers concerned with market exchange! Given immortality, I would instead do anything else, even nothing at all, then work for market exchange (for eternity).
> 
> I know it is not so common these days to find this kind of supposition unless we follow Romer's "The Trouble With Macroeconomics" (2016). 
> 
> But what I would like to gather from you are your opinions about what it says about the evolution of economics.
> 
> Is it irrelevant? Should we discuss it more? Does it represent a divide at the core of discipline? Are we all, in the end, "guilty of this kind of crime"? 
> 
> --
> Kind regards,
> 
> Felipe R. Sousa
> Political Economy, PhD candidate
> University of Coimbra