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In response to Tony on October 4, maybe I can reduce the confusion  
by narrowing the query.   
 
(1) I do eventually want to develop my own ideas. But to limit the  
enquiry, on a history list, I want only to find out what other people  
mean by 'the market', particularly those economists that speak of it.   
 
Adam Smith's chapter III is entitled 'that the division of labour is  
limited by the extent of the market'. Walras lesson 5 is entitled 'the  
market and competition.' Marshall, it is true, speaks alternately of  
'markets', 'the market' and 'a market'. But the practice of speaking of  
'the' market is alive and promulgating: Chapter 1, Section 1-2 in Begg,  
Dornbusch and Fischer is headed 'the role of the market'. I neither  
invented this usage nor defend it! At this point I ask only what these  
people mean by it. My innovation consists only in asking where they  
place its boundaries; since they do speak of 'the' market, where do they  
think it begins and ends?   
 
(2) I'm not convinced they just mean 'the economy'. If so, why do they  
distinguish 'market economy' from 'planned economy'? Surely, the very  
use of this distinction draws a boundary. Again, I'm not inventing it; I  
observe it in economic writings. I'm simply asking where the writers  
think it lies.   
 
(3) In like vein, do economists actually in practice treat the market as  
'an analytical construct whose boundaries are wherever we choose to  
put them'? They may feel free in themselves to set boundaries where  
they please, but they present the results as hard science, which to me  
implies a claim that these boundaries exist independent of volition, and  
that such economists have special knowledge about where they lie.  
What is the basis of this special knowledge?   
 
I could present much textual evidence but for brevity I'll cite Soros  
(1999:40 'The Crisis of Global Capitalism', Pub: Little Brown & co):   
 
"There is a prevailing belief that economic affairs are subject to  
irresistible natural laws comparable to the laws of physics"   
 
I don't think Soros is just writing about the naive public: I think he is  
also talking about economic thinking as it presents itself to the world,  
which is as a hard, objective, science on a par with its natural  
counterparts. These natural counterparts don't allow themselves to set  
boundaries where they please. They take great care with analytical  
distinctions. Economists may think this is a bad idea, but not to the  
extent of renouncing their claim to be scientists. To the extent that they  
write as scientists, I think there is an implied claim that their distinctions  
have an objective, analytical foundation. What is this foundation?   
 
(4) Which brings me back to my original question: since many  
economists do speak and write as if there was a definite institution  
called the market, and since they clearly claim to know more about this  
institution than non-economists, and since they act as if this knowledge  
is based on the scientificity, in some sense, of their activities, where  
exactly do they locate the boundaries of the objects of which they  
claim to have special scientific knowledge? What is the basis of their  
science?   
 
Alan 
 
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