File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/marxism.Jul12-Aug17.94, message 385


From: <EBERT-AT-newschool.edu>
Date:          Mon, 15 Aug 1994 13:33:30 EDT
Subject:       Help! 


Help! My system is being inundated with marxist stuff, unfortunately 
not only do I not have enough time to go through it (not realizing 
when I signedup the extent of, and apparant fruitfulness of marxist 
stuff today!), but also at this point my interest in marxism pertains 
specifically to philosophical questions raised by the man himself -  
vis-a-vis the scoundral Jon Elster, the analytical marxist.
In brief, my paper is a critique of neoclassical marcroeconomic 
methodology used in the construction of development policy for UDC.  I 
address the shortcomings of utilitarianism and suggest shifting the 
debate surrounding the market\nonmarket dichotomy 
(exchange/production vs consumption/nonproduction) to the nature of 
work itself as an indicator of well-being (this is a very simple 
explanation). Ultimately the objective is to suggest shifting away 
from the sanctity of the price mechanism as defining appropriate 
"action" to the nature of the work itself (somewhere the conection to 
capabilities (Sen) must also be made) as an indicator of 
appropriate "action".  In short, I find some potential in Elster's 
work on "self-realization" and will explore the 
possibility of applying his standard (which he applies only to the 
market sector [I'm not exactly clear why he doesn't discuss in the 
context of the nonmarket especially the household - but considering 
the sanctity of the price mechanism in all economic theory it doesn't 
surprise me] to household labor.

Since I haven't actually written the paper I'm going to sign off in a 
couple of days for a month or so.  However, until then if anyone 
thinks I'm complete nuts or whatever! write!

Sources I'm using:


Elster, Jon
Sen, Amartya
Ellerman, David
Marx, K (though I admit I haven't read Vol. I, II, III, theories of 
Surplus Value, Grundrisse, etc. five thousand times! excuse me) but 
apparantly neither did Althusser? 

Signing off

Laura
Ebert-AT-newschool.edu       



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