Brad De Long wrote:
> >Hi. My name is Sam Pawlett and am new to the list but have been lurking
> >and unable to contribute due to lingering medical problems. I am a 26 yr
> >old graduate in philosophy and economics from S.F.U. here in Vancouver.
> >I studied Marxism and comparative economics with Mike Lebowitz whose
> >fine work most of you are probably familiar with. Last time I spoke with
> >Mike he was planning a book on Actually Existing Socialism, a kind of
> >Reply to the Brus/Kornai Hayekian argument that any kind of planned
> >socialism will inevitably lead to economic stagnation because of a lack
> >of hard budget constraint and the absence of sufficient material
> >incentives.
>
> I don't think Janos Kornai would appreciate being lumped in with Hayek.
> Hayek, after all, said that a planned economy could not work. Kornai said
> that it was very unlikely to work well--and it is hard for me at least to
> see how Kornai's arguments could be refuted: there are no counterexamples...
>
> Brad DeLong
>From what I can see, Kornai and Brus' work has been sadly neglected among
professional economists. Despite Kornai's wholesale conversion to capitalist
ideology, his respect for Marx has remained true and his scorn for neo-classical
economics also remains. Kornai presents an interesting challenge to Marxists
since he uses Marxist methodology(a focus on the organic whole rather than the
constituent parts) to arrive at pro-capitalist conclusions. His thought is a
curious hybrid of Marx,Keynes, Schumpeter and Hayek. What he takes from these
thinkers is mostly their methodology. None of these thinkers used the method of
neo-classical economics (meth. indiv.)and each was an eclecticist of sorts,
which, I think, can partly account for the explanatory power of their work.
Above all, Kornai recognizes that neo-classical economics is useless when it
comes to explaining and predicting real world phenomena.