From Fetishism to ‘Shocked Disbelief ’: Economics, Dialectics and Value Theory

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 9-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
David McNally
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Critical Survey ◽  
Value Analysis ◽  
Mainstream Economics ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Arrival

AbstractThe recent arrival ofFrom Economics Imperialism to Freakonomicsby Fine and Milonakis is especially propitious given the context of the Great Recession of 2008 – and the associated decline of public faith in the verities of mainstream economics. Fine and Milonakis provide a magisterial critical survey of contemporary economics and demonstrate the need for a ‘new and truly interdisciplinary political economy’ capable of ‘incorporating the social and historical from the outset’. But their cause requires the explicit development of value analysis within the framework of dialectical social theory. This requires foregrounding the ways in which Marx’s categories inCapitalare from the start historical precipitates that acknowledge their own inherent historicity.

Economics and Political Economy Today: Introduction to the Symposium on Fine and Milonakis

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Ashman
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Economic Reason ◽  
Historical Reasoning ◽  
Subjective Value ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sphere Of Influence

AbstractEconomics has long been the ‘dismal science’. The crisis in classical political economy at the end of the nineteenth century produced radically differing intellectual responses: Marx’s reconstitution of value theory on the basis of his dialectical method, the marginalists’ development of subjective value theory, and the historical school’s advocacy of inductive and historical reasoning. It is against this background that economics was established as a discrete academic discipline, consciously modelling itself on maths and physics and developing its focus on theorising exchange. This entailed extraordinary reductionism, with humans regarded as rational, self-interested actors, and class, society, history and ‘the social’ being excised from economic analysis. On the basis of this narrowing of its concerns, particularly from the 1980s onwards, economics has sought to expand its sphere of influence through a form of imperialism which seeks to apply mainstream economic approaches to other social sciences and sees economics as ‘the universal grammar of social science’. The implications of this shift are discussed in Ben Fine and Dimitris Milonakis’s two volumes, where they analyse the fate of the social, the political and the historical in economic thought, and assess the future for an inter-disciplinary critique of economic reason.

‘I’ve Learned to Love What’s Going to Pay Me’: A Culture of Despair in Higher Education during a Time of Insecurity

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Aronson
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
University Employees ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Structural Problems ◽  
The Social ◽  
Commuter University ◽  
The One ◽  
College Plans

Based on 153 interviews at a mid-sized, commuter university, this article examines the disjuncture between students and alumni on the one hand, and faculty, academic staff and administrators on the other in their perceptions of the challenges facing students who graduate during the Great Recession. Findings reveal a culture of despair in response to economic insecurity for students and graduates: they pursued degrees primarily for a workplace credential, were fearful about the future, and experienced and expressed uncertainty in their post-college plans. While university employees were sympathetic to student problems, only a small number of faculty, staff and administrators viewed student despair as resulting from large-scale structural problems. Instead, the majority of faculty and all of the administrators and academic staff emphasized the need for an individualized response to the social problem of the Great Recession.

scholarly journals Planejamento: do economicismo moderno à dialética socioespacial

2008 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Lucas Linhares
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
The Social ◽  
Analytical Category ◽  
Rationality Model

A teoria e a práxis do planejamento, nas sociedades capitalistas modernas, refletem a consolidação de um modelo de racionalidade fundado numa visão mecanicista dos processos sociais. A matriz positivista da ciência – que busca enunciar (e predizer) os fenômenos sociais por meio de leis universais – alcançou posição hegemônica e assentou as bases do planejamento moderno. No campo da Economia Política, dominada pela perspectiva mecanicista embutida na corrente neoclássica, a busca da construção de esquemas teóricos generalistas confere ao espaço, enquanto categoria analítica, um papel secundário. O presente artigo propõe inicialmente uma discussão epistemológica, buscando avaliar criticamente o significado da incorporação de um paradigma economicista e mecanicista por parte da teoria do planejamento. Entrecortando a discussão epistemológica, procuramos, amparados na perspectiva teórica neomarxista, reafirmar o papel do espaço como categoria elementar à compreensão dialética da dinâmica capitalista, sem a qual uma teoria do planejamento incorreria em importante lacuna. O reconhecimento de que as contradições do modo de produção devem ser desvendadas pela investigação do espaço socialmente engendrado é capaz de nos conduzir a uma teoria social mais robusta no balizamento do planejamento.Palavras-chave: planejamento; dialética socioespacial; modernidade; espaço social.Abstract: In modern capitalist societies, the Planning Theory and Praxis reflects a consolidation of a “mechanical” rationality model which treats social phenomena as they could be described by universal and immutable laws. Specifically in the field on Political Economy which is dominated by neoclassical corpus, searching for general theoretical schemes tends to neglect the “space” as analytical category. Initially, this paper aims to make an epistemological discussion and to make a critical assessment of the embodiment of the “mechanical paradigm” by the Planning Theory. Moreover, this paper intends to put the space on foreground of the Social Theory, i.e., the space is taken as a fundamental category to comprehend the capitalist dynamics. Looking into socially built space allows us to reach a socio-spatial dialectics and hence a more comprehensive Social Theory and a stronger Planning Theory.Keywords: planning; socio-spatial dialectics; modernity; social space.

scholarly journals Theory and Practice of Crisis in Political Economy: The Case of the Great Recession in Spain

2021 ◽  
pp. 048661342110272
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Mateo
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Interest Rates ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Jel Classification ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Housing Bubble ◽  
Surplus Value ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Labor Market Rigidities

This paper addresses Marx’s theory of crisis in order to analyze the Great Recession in Spain, a peripheral economy within the Eurozone. It demonstrates that underlying the problem of the “housing bubble” is an incapacity to generate surplus value, which in turn explains certain particularities related to capital composition, productivity, wages, and finance. The article further carries out a critique of both orthodox and heterodox approaches that focus on (1) profit squeeze caused by labor market rigidities, (2) underconsumption due to stagnant wages, and (3) finances, interest rates, and indebtedness JEL classification: B14, E11, E20, E43, J30

scholarly journals Review of Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip N. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Class Differences ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Moment

The questions Marianne Cooper asks are relevant beyondthe context of the Great Recession – the event that headlines her analysis – but the crisis of the moment underscores their importance: How do people (women, men, families) increasingly charged with managing their owneconomic security experience and handle that task, emotionally? And further, what do the social class differences in that process tell us about life in an era of ballooning economic inequality?

Fine Tuning the Zelizer View

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viviana A. Zelizer
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Fine Tuning ◽  
Neoclassical Economics ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Meaning Of Money ◽  
Theories Of Money

This chapter presents the author's response to a complaint from two economic analysts that her conception of money as represented by the paper The Social Meaning of Money neglected general theories of money in favor of emphasizing the constant reintroduction of particularity into monetary transactions. In their paper “Markets and Money in Social Theory: What Role for Economics?,” Fine and Lapavitsas (2000) incorporated the author's critique of neoclassical economics and her empirical work, but not the theoretical basis for either one. The author welcomes their project to draw a different, interesting theory of markets and money from Marx's writing. However, she also says that Fine and Lapavitsas' theoretical enthusiasm for a political economy framework blinds them to the emergence of newer theoretical possibilities over the last decade or so. She responds to their statement in two parts: first, reacting to specific criticisms of her view; and second, outlining alternative ways of explaining markets and monetary transactions.

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