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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!). 
---------------------- 
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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