[Marxism] "Marxist Economic Theory" - Ernest Mandel

[Jeff Richards]

Yes, Mandel, Brenner,Sweezy, Braveman and lets throw in Frank Stillwell
("Political Economy: The Contest of Economic Ideas"- Oxford-2002) and Isaac
Ilyich Rubin 'A History of Economic Thought'(Moscow 1929-Pluto Press 1989).

What exactly is 'a recipe for confusion'? You mean one or another didn't
quite get it right? Why is it a problem if they don't agree? Lenin and
Trotsky didn't 'agree' on a whole host of issues (nor did Rosa Luxemburg for
that matter)? Surely the whole point of studying economic theory is to gain
illumination from a range of opinions and then form an opinion yourself. It
is a good idea to have some humility when it comes to marxist economic
theory. I don't think there are any 'received wisdom's'. Just what is 'stick
closely to Marx'- does that really mean 'stick closely to my idea of what
marx may have thought'. (If you want a humourous take on what Marx may have
thought of the late 20th century you might want to try Juan Goytisolo's
novel 'The Marx Family Saga'- city lights books, san francisco 1993)

I sometimes wonder why marxist economics virtually vanished from popular
radical left discourse from the 1980s onwards (just when it was needed).
Gone were the days in the mid 1970s when Ernest Mandel rocked up in a small
city like adelaide (south australia) and 500 people listened to him in one
theatre and the next day a thousand at the adelaide university union hall* .
By the end of the 1980s much of the left had simply turned their noses on
economics. No generation of the quality of Mandel, Baran, Sweezy,
Bettelheim, Braverman, Dobb, Andre Gunder Frank, Arghiri Emmanuel, Amin,
Lipietz really followed until Brenner comes in to catch the imagination of
the radical left. All of these people had many differing viewpoints, a
testament to the wonderful plurality of marxist thinking. One explanation I
can offer for the 'decline of the long boom' in marxist economics is the
unfortunate tendency for its advocates to have neurotic obsessions about
characterising this or that theorist. Most radical left activists probably
couldn't give a rats ass if Brenner is a 'neo-smithian' or Mandel is a
'Monetarist Marxist' ( the characterisation given to Mandel by (I think) the
right wing Australian columnist PP Mcguinness).


*and when the Labor Deputy Prime Minister of Australia Jim Cairns and
Minister for Minerals and Energy Rex -RFX- Connor called in Mandel to ask
for advice on what to do. Many years later, Mandel, during a conference in
Managua, Nicaragua (first sandanista government), humorously remarked to
one australian DSP comrade 'unfortunately they didn't take my advice'. A few
months later that government was thrown out of office in a constitutional
coup.

On 22/01/2008, Steve Palmer <spalmer999 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Oh dear. What a recipe for confusion. Mandel AND Brenner? Where do they
> agree?
>
> Mattick dealt with Mandel's Late Capitalism in
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1974/crisis/ch05.htm. Brenner
> is
> of course fashionable, but come on, he's a neo-Smithian - he makes
> competition
> the cause, not the result - in complete opposition to Marx.
>
> The original question was about getting to grips with Marx's critique of
> political economy. Drink from the source or people who actually stick
> closely
> to Marx.
>
> Grossman: http://www.marxists.org/archive/grossman/
> Shoul: http://www.marxists.org/archive/shoul/1947/breakdown/index.htm
> Mattick: http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/index.htm
> Vitaly Vygodsky - Story of a Great Discovery; Economic Substantiation of
> the
> Theory of Socialism.
>
> Steve
>
> --- Jeff Richards <jeffare2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > For more on Mandel go to : 'Late Capitalism' and then 'Long Waves of
> > Capitalist Development' (edited version of the Alfred Marshall Lectures
> that
> > Mandel gave at Cambridge University) both were published by Verso in
> London.
> > For the most up to date neo- Marxist economic work go to Robert Brenner
> "The
> > Boom and the Bubble: The US in the World economy" (must read) and the
> > Economics of Global Turbulenece.
>
> "I study a lot. That is one of the responsibilities of every
> revolutionary." Hugo Chavez.
>
>
>
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-- 
Jeff Richards
jeffare2 at gmail.com
web diary:
http://jeffrichards.blogspot.com/