[Looks like Nicholas is going to help clear up James' "bleeding heart" reference! HB] Ein bleeding heart oder ein bezahlte Klopffechter? First a point regarding Marx's invective. In the Afterword to the second German edition of the 1st vol of Capital, he certainly does not call Ricardo or JS Mill "hired prize fighters" [bezahlte Klopffechterei, a Klopffechter is someone who fences to get money for the show as opposed to a true Fechtmeister]. On the contrary he talks about the death knell of scientific bourgeois political economy. Marx never doubted Ricardo as a scientist. In the same passage, Marx explicitly excludes Mill from those who are hired prize fighters. He writes: "Men who still claimed some scientific standing and aspired to be something more than mere sophists and sycophants of the ruling-classes tried to harmonise the Political Economy of capital with the claims, no longer to be ignored, of the proletariat. Hence a shallow [geistloser] syncretism of which John Stuart Mill is the best representative." The question is not that of attributing bad or cynical motives or a bleeding heart, for that matter, to those who hold a different view. I will not hold Newton responsible if a break my leg. It is not even a question of normative vs positive science. [we are all wertfrei scientists now] The question is whether the definition of economics as a science of choice is either relevant or theoretically fruitful. And I believe it is not. Nicholas J. Theocarakis