Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 15:32:42 +0800
Subject: Re: HoPE article


Would someone be so good as to provide a brief summary of the various views
of Brewer &c so that those of us who do not have access to the HoPE can
follow this discussion a little better. My apologies for burdening someone
with this request.

For what it's worth - can't comment on Brewer &c - it appears that
practical success (if one can get enough people in the world to acknowledge
it) is the main criteria of theoretical validity in the case of economics.

Neo-classical economics is really not especially successful in accounting
for the real world - witness the surprise over the Mexican crisis, or the
twists and turns to explain East Asian economic growth. Predictions are a
50-50 affair, and so on. One might note that not until quite recently,
technological growth was not even an integral part of nce thinking
(Schumpeter was a glorious exception), yet it was very much an integral
part of Marx's.

Drawing up a balance sheet would, I contend, not be particularly
unfavourable to Marx. But the sticking point, of course, was the implosion
of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, China and a number of others.

The fact of capitalism's effects on huge swathes of the South is largely
hidden from view - a testimony to the power of the North in communications,
information, news, and theorizing. And of the weakness of the left in the
North to gets its voice(s) into the information arena outside of a small
circle of the converted - and even not within that, as that small circle is
further fragmented into purists of all types.

Anyway, hiding its failures from view, blowing up its successes and
coupling that with a belief that such success must derive from correct
thinking - and neo-classical economics gains its aura. Dare one say that it
Calvinism continues to exert its hold - material success is the measure of
spiritual electedness?

By the same token, shamanism was extremely successful when it had its
believers and its practitioners were taken sufficiently seriously. And it
surely had its measure of material success as well.

Khay Jin




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