Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 10:53:23 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-I: John Roemer's Letter to The New Yorker



I'm not sure what of Marxist interest is to be said about these few brief
lines. There are Marxists who think that mathematics is bad because it
abstracts from social relations. Of course this is not necessarily true.
Roemer's own neoclassical model rather tend to, and I have criticized him
in print for this. (See my In Defense of Exploitation, Economics and
Philosophy, Oct 1995.) But social conflict can be modelled mathematically.
Bowles and Gintis' "contexted exchange" model is a very impressive attempt
to do with within a broadlt Marxian framework. And of course game theory
is exactly an attempt to model conflict mathematically. It has been put to
good use in Marxist politics in Adam Przeworski's studies of social
democracy. I would only add that while mathematical tools are useful, they
do not exhause the useful repetoire for thinking about social problems.
Beyond these banalities, what's to be said?

--justin

On Fri, 10 Jan 1997, James Farmelant wrote:

> John Roemer wrote the following letter which appears in the latest issue
> of The New
> Yorker (Jan. 13, 1997):
> 
> 	John Cassidy's critique of modern economics ("The Decline of
> Economics," December 2nd) ignores the fact that the natural tool for
> thinking carefully
> about complex systems of interacting units is mathematics, and that this
> is why theoretical economics has, in the last fifty years, become quite
> mathematical. Cassidy complains that "many economists are involved in
> intellectual pursuits that have little to do with the social issues
> dominating the newspaper headlines," and reports that the senior
> economist at A.T.&T. complains that academic economics "is nothing like
> as useful to the business community as it could be." Neither of these complaints is germane.  How long would Einstein have lasted in the research
> department of the telephone company?  I do not disvalue the application
> of economic
> theory to the improvement of human welfare, but one should judge the
> value of a science or an art by its best contributions, not by its
> mediocre ones.
> 			John E. Roemer
> 	Director, Program on Economy, Justice & Society
> 		University of California
> 		Davis, Calif.
> ------------------------------------
> 
> 	Given that as Justin has suggested Roemer is one of the leading
> Marxist
> economists in the U.S. and that he is a leading theorist of Rational
> Choice Marxism
> I wonder if anybody has a comments on Roemer's letter from a Marxist perspective?
>                                                          James F.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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