The best of all possible worlds.
As some of you might have realized my hatred for economy is only surpassed by my hatred for economists. That is, burgeoise economists. When I first began to study economics I had been taught - indoctrinated, really - to believe that it was a clear and fool-proof science, each result given by the mathematical models (with some variations, of course). However, it soon became clear, particularly by looking at the history of economy that most of it hangs in the air, that it is unclear, vague, impossible to verify, difficult to perceive cause and effect and most of all: resting on an impossible philosophical fundament.
There is progress in history, not because history has a cause, reason or an ultimate, communist end, but because we can simply compare earlier results to later in a meaningful way. Much like how nationalism is different as the rallying point in a colonial struggle for liberty against the modern, badly hidden racism in most nations. One of the great dividing, revolutionary, changes is the burgeoise revolutions of the late 18th and the entire 19th century. It brings with it cataclysmic changes in intellectual life - what Khun would call a paradigm shift - and innumerable advances in social life and economics.
Todays liberals applaud the Enlightenment thinkers as well, and for good reason. Kant, Voltaire, Rosseau, Jefferson and all the others were titanic figures, carried aloft on the broad shoulders of their class. Their philosophy was born out of the historical context and widened by the perspectives that were opened as the free men (note: men) of the city came to power.
Understanding themselves as free, autonome from the praxis that they engaged in as buyers of labour power, sequestered in their mansions and salons they made a philosophy in their image, they made themselves universal. And to be honest, the paradigm shift was revolutionary: it managed to overthrow, in it's role as ideology, all the old prejudices, the chains and the superstitions of the earlier age and create a fundament that was unthinkable before. The testament of the burgeoise in the state: the constitution, is a living sign of this. It was an intellectual and social leap forward of a scale that had never been seen before.
However, and this is important, that was 300 years ago. Modern economics still stand on the unsteady ground of yesteryears philosophical categories. Man as rational, self-interested, lacking any social background whatsoever, a clean tabula rasa making choices and weighing costs against other costs. Anyone who isn't indoctrinated in the fairy tale world of liberalism (the old cliché about how communism is a good idea in theory, but it would never work in reality seems to be more than appropriate about capitalism) understands that man is more than just that.
The many prophecies; whether doomsday or god-given grace, that economists have delivered have for the most part failed. There are a large number of bizarre experiments with monkeys throwing darts at economic charts being better investors than stock brokers, and even the grand viziers of burgeoise economy, heads of large departments, WTO officials and others have all attacked economics as stale dogmas and impractical theories.
There is progress in history, not because history has a cause, reason or an ultimate, communist end, but because we can simply compare earlier results to later in a meaningful way. Much like how nationalism is different as the rallying point in a colonial struggle for liberty against the modern, badly hidden racism in most nations. One of the great dividing, revolutionary, changes is the burgeoise revolutions of the late 18th and the entire 19th century. It brings with it cataclysmic changes in intellectual life - what Khun would call a paradigm shift - and innumerable advances in social life and economics.
Todays liberals applaud the Enlightenment thinkers as well, and for good reason. Kant, Voltaire, Rosseau, Jefferson and all the others were titanic figures, carried aloft on the broad shoulders of their class. Their philosophy was born out of the historical context and widened by the perspectives that were opened as the free men (note: men) of the city came to power.
Understanding themselves as free, autonome from the praxis that they engaged in as buyers of labour power, sequestered in their mansions and salons they made a philosophy in their image, they made themselves universal. And to be honest, the paradigm shift was revolutionary: it managed to overthrow, in it's role as ideology, all the old prejudices, the chains and the superstitions of the earlier age and create a fundament that was unthinkable before. The testament of the burgeoise in the state: the constitution, is a living sign of this. It was an intellectual and social leap forward of a scale that had never been seen before.
However, and this is important, that was 300 years ago. Modern economics still stand on the unsteady ground of yesteryears philosophical categories. Man as rational, self-interested, lacking any social background whatsoever, a clean tabula rasa making choices and weighing costs against other costs. Anyone who isn't indoctrinated in the fairy tale world of liberalism (the old cliché about how communism is a good idea in theory, but it would never work in reality seems to be more than appropriate about capitalism) understands that man is more than just that.
The many prophecies; whether doomsday or god-given grace, that economists have delivered have for the most part failed. There are a large number of bizarre experiments with monkeys throwing darts at economic charts being better investors than stock brokers, and even the grand viziers of burgeoise economy, heads of large departments, WTO officials and others have all attacked economics as stale dogmas and impractical theories.
posted by Björn at 12:00 PM
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