Brenner on competition

JKSCHW at aol.com JKSCHW at aol.com
Wed Sep 16 20:27:54 PDT 1998


In a message dated 98-09-16 18:46:48 EDT, you write:

<< >Justin

> Schwartz on the other hand finds much of value in

> Hayek's work and has even been known to call himself

> a Hayekian Marxist.

Okay, synthesizing Marx and Keynes isn't so ridiculous, but HAYEK???

Isn't he the idol of Internet Libertarian Nerd-Boys?

>>

A longer answer to this is offered (from aphilosopgicxal point of view) in Chris Sciabarra's work on Dialectds in Hayek and Marx. A very short couple of comments will have to suffice here: Marx and Hayek are both interested in real world economics that are based on epistemologically realistic models which assume incomplete information and high transaction costs. They are instiututionalists who think that actors act in accord with group interests--for Hayek, non-class ones, but ina ny event, not the sort of individualism you get in neoclassical economics. They both recognize that disequilibrium is the normal state of capitalist economics and that capitallism is a dynamic system charcterized by what Schumpter called createive destruction. My own Hayekianism is applified by my acceptance of Heyek's critique of planned economic models. What Hayek failed to realize is that his attack on central planning is logically utterrly different from his own promotion of provate property. Insofar as H is worshipped by libertarians, he's also unread by them, or they'd find him much less congenial.

--jks



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