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