===================== HES POSTING ==================== 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 ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]