----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- > >Are Brad deLong's questions rhetorical questions meant to be >based on study of original texts or are they based on secondary >digestions? >Geert Reuten >(University of Amsterdam) My, my... I believe that it is only by a deliberate attempt to *not* study the original texts that one can praise Marx as an economist... Take a look back at _Wage Labor and Capital_ or _Value, Price, and Profit_. It's hard to read them and disagree with Paul Samuelson's characterization of Marx as a "minor post-Ricardian." Some of Marx's other works are much more interesting. _The 18th Brumaire_, for example, is a great read. (Never mind for the moment that Marx was wrong in his claim that the Legitimists and the Orleanists couldn't get together because one party represented agricultural and the other industrial capital. Never mind that he was wrong in his claim that the peasants were "a sack of potatoes" rather than a class--the Paris-region peasants showed that they were a class for themselves quite convincingly in June 1848.) There is a lot of good history and political analysis in the first volume of _Capital_. And as Barkley Rosser pointed out there are shrewd observations about technological change scattered throughout the oeuvre. But an economist? Nahh... Let me suggest to Geert Reuten that he go read Norbert Elias's _The Civilizing Process_ To Michael Perelman and "tendencies," I would point out that when he (or I) highlight and stress a "tendency" in our own work, we are implicitly (and explicitly) claiming that this tendency will be a powerful shaper of the outcome, not something overwhelmed by other factors. At least hold Marx to the same standard. To Tom Walker I would say that the claim that "the final crisis of capitalism is manifest in the need for the constant intervention of the state to change the rules every time capital isn't winning" doesn't pass the coherence test. If capitalism changes the rules and goes on, it isn't the "final crisis," is it? I would ask Romain Kroes to take a look at the UN _Human Development Report_ or the World Bank's _World Development Report_. To Larry Willmore I would say that we should demand more of even a "close runner-up" for the title of greatest economist of the millennium than he does. We should demand not just that he try hard to analyze the economy, but that his analyses be successful... To Barkley Rosser, touche--although David Landes has always argued that Andrew Ure and Charles Babbage had an earlier and clearer view of technological change than did Marx. Brad De Long Berkeley ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]