On Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:03:54 -0400 (EDT) bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU
(Rakesh Bhandari) writes:
>Jim F noted:
>>
>>Not surprisingly many leading neoclassical economists including
>>both liberals and conservatives have come out for the
>decriminalization
>>if not legalization of drugs.
>
>I would have thought that power of drugs to create impulses in the
>form of
>addictions that lead to ex post facto rationalisations for the desire
>thereof would compromise the beneficient welfare aspects of the market
>that
>(putatively) derive from (putative) consumer sovereignty.
As I understand it neoclassical economists in their analyses take consumer preferences as givens and they generally do not bother themselves with exploring what causes consumers to have the preferences that they have. This is especially true for the "revealed preference" approach which has largely replaced the utility theory of value among neoclassical economists. This approach is popular because it helps to reduce economics to a form of rational choice theory or what the Marxist economist, Maurice Dobb, called "a sort of algebra of human choice . . ." And it has the advantage from an ideological standpoint of leaving the doctrine od consumer sovereignty sacrosanct which is great for those who want to argue for the greater efficiency from the standpoint of welfare economics of market capitalism over socialism. If we on the other hand follow Maurice Dobb in taking a less than reverential view of the doctrine of consumer sovereignty then much of the case for the allege superiority of capitalism over socialism collapses.
> It may be
>that
>the attempt to ban drugs has counterproductive results but I don't see
>how
>their legalisation squares with neoclassical economics either. This
>gets
>into that vast territory of consumer psychology about which I know
>nothing.
>From the kinds of polemics that I have seen that have issued
from the pens of leading neoclassical economists, most of them
do in fact argue for drug legalization on the basis of its
counterproductive results. Thus these economists are able to
duck the whole issue of consumer psychology. A serious
consideration of which would require the abandonment of
the myth of the autonomous individual which is a pillar
of not only neoclassical economics but of bourgeois ideology
in general.
Returning to the issue of the counterproductive effects of the drug wars, I think there is a good deal to be said for Carrol Cox's view that many of these effects are in fact consistent with the interests of the ruling class and that this consistency of effects with ruling class interests is the driving force behind the perpetuation of public policies that are otherwise evident failures from the standpoint of their stated purposes and goals. However, a consideration of such issues is more likely to be productively pursued by using Marxist analysis rather than neoclassical economics.
Jim Farmelant
>
>
>Yours, Rakesh
>
>
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