Friday, April 20, 2018

Lars P. Syll — Marx predicted the present crisis – and points the way out


Self-identified "erratic Marxist" Yanis Varoufakis. He absolutely and totally understands Marx and Engels' fundamental assumption (freedom and happiness) and method (engagement).

Most either miss this or obscure it intentionally. 

Psychologist Erich Fromm got it in his Marx's Concept of Man (1961). He begins the work with a section entitled,  The Falsification of Marx's Concepts, which reveals the caricature of Marx that has been created as a straw man to attack.

Like the anarchists whom Marx opposed and debated with, he was a libertarian of the left that looked forward to humanity transcending oppression based on class structure and class rule. 

Between demonizing Marx and glorying him, the middle way is to see his work for what it is and the assumptions on which it is based. While the significance of Marx and Engels  is mostly historically now, they are also two of the giants on whose shoulders we stand, like it or not.

But bourgeois liberalism expressed through various forms of capitalism views that degree of honest inquiry as threatening, just as monarch and aristocracy correctly viewed advocates for bourgeois liberalism and their works as threatening to what is now the old order.

As with all that have gone before who have contributed to the endowment of knowledge, the intelligent approach is learn from Marx, both positive and negative, and to adapt this to contemporary conditions and the opportunities and challenges they present.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Marx predicted the present crisis — and points the way out
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

See also

The tractability hoax in modern economics

1 comment:

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Stop beating mainstream economics ― it is long dead
Comment on Lars Syll on ‘The tractability hoax in modern economics’

Lars Syll describes how economists proceed: “The theories and models that mainstream economists construct describe imaginary worlds using a combination of formal sign systems such as mathematics and ordinary language. The descriptions made are extremely thin and to a large degree disconnected to the specific contexts of the targeted system than one (usually) wants to (partially) represent. This is not by chance. These closed formalistic-mathematical theories and models are constructed for the purpose of being able to deliver purportedly rigorous deductions that may somehow by be exportable to the target system.” And he concludes: “What is wrong with mainstream economics is not that it employs models per se, but that it employs poor models. They are poor because they do not bridge to the real world target system in which we live.”

All this is true. The curious thing is, it is true since 140+ years. So, the real question is how can this be?

Standard economics is well-articulated and it is built upon this verbalized neo-Walrasian axiom set:
HC1. There exist economic agents.
HC2. Agents have preferences over outcomes.
HC3. Agents independently optimize subject to constraints.
HC4. Choices are made in interrelated markets.
HC5. Agents have full relevant knowledge.
HC6. Observable economic outcomes are coordinated, so they must be discussed with reference to equilibrium states. (Weintraub)

It is all in the open, everyone with one milligram of scientific competence can see that these premises are absurd. HC3, HC5, and HC6 are plain NONENTITIES. Every theory/model that contains just one NONENTITY is a priori false and scientifically worthless. Methodology tells us that when the axioms are false the whole analytical superstructure is false.

So, what has to be done is to simply throw the neo-Walrasian axiom set out of the window and start anew. This act is called a Paradigm Shift. But nothing of the sort happens. The journalistic loudspeaker of the profession proudly declares: “… most of what I and many others do is sorta-kinda neoclassical because it takes the maximization-and-equilibrium world as a starting point.” (Krugman).

There is no use to apply any of the propositions of the set HC1/HC6 and there is no use to accuse standard economics of unrealism and mathiness. However, this is what happens day in day out. Economists play this silly game since 140+ years.

Orthodoxy simply recycles long refuted stuff as already Morgenstern criticized: “In economics we should strive to proceed, wherever we can, exactly according to the standards of the other, more advanced, sciences, where it is not possible, once an issue has been decided, to continue to write about it as if nothing had happened.”

Heterodoxy, on the other side, tirelessly repeats its trivial criticism. And that’s it. No conclusion is drawn, no consequences follow, no methodologist steps in, nobody resigns, nobody is fired, all ends in a draw, and the status quo goes on.#1

Heterodoxy, clearly, never tried in earnest to overthrow Orthodoxy: “… it takes a new theory, and not just the destructive exposure of assumptions or the collection of new facts, to beat an old theory.” (Blaug) Heterodoxy’s ambition never went beyond the pluralism of false theories and a bigger share of the academic curriculum. That is human-all-too-human, but it is not science.#2

What is economic debate these days? A wrestling show of useful political idiots with zero scientific content and no result that ever disturbs the pluralism of provably false proto-scientific theories/models.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 What is so great about cargo cult science? or, How economists learned to stop worrying about failure
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/05/what-is-so-great-about-cargo-cult.html

#2 New Economic Thinking: The 10 crucial points
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/07/new-economic-thinking-10-crucial-points.html