Platitudes and profound truth
The other day, I was reading a review of John Kenneth Galbraith's work written by some economist, but I'll be darned if I remember who. He was not much impressed with Galbraith's work. He claimed that part of it was merely mouthing some Marxist platitude.
Let's see. Everything Marx wrote was a platitude. Everything contained in an orthodox economic textbook is profound scientific truth.
Galbraith was fond of saying that one could approach economic truth by discovering where the vested economic interests lie.
That does not seem a controversial way of explaining events. Or am I mouthing another Marxist platitude?
posted by Lynn @ 1:21 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
If Marx had written "don't beat your wife" there would be a sector of American ideology that would advocate wife-beating... just because. Such are the minds of the reactionary zealots.
For my way of thinking an economic model that advocates making the rich richer, in hopes that wealth is somehow subject to the forces of gravity and will trickle down -- eventually -- to the lower classes, is fundamentally inhuman, or at least callously cruel and proven to be a bogus model. Why is it that politicians never focus on making the poor richer, in hopes that the wealth will float upward?
Nevermind. It was a rhetorical question.
epm,
It is amazing how what you have pointed out seems to draw certain people's ire.
platitude...but which ones? I don't know many economists that have read Das Kapital, apart from having to for an essay at college.
Marx's central line was that capitalism has a revolutionary impact on the world and on the development of productive forces. But it also started to, and is still, holdong that process back.
And now we have an 'anti-risk' capitalism and an anti-elitism elite!
Karl would be turning in his grave.
beatroot,
As far as I can tell most economists are proud that they have never read any Marx, let alone Capital. I thought it a rather instructive book.
It would be interesting to see how Marx would rewrite it should he return today.
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