>Charles: Well , that's curve ball. Would it be impertinent to ask
>what you consider yourself to be ? Maybe political economist ? Let
>me guess: Writer.
Journalist. "Writer" is so pretentious.
>As for the Marxist label, my first instinct is to say "depends on
>who's asking." But if I had to make what the pollsters call a forced
>choice, yes or no, then yes, unlike Marx, I'm a Marxist.
>
>
>((((((((((((
>
>Charles: You heard it here "first".
Hardly. The first text in Wall Street is an epigraph from Marx. I'd say that's what economists call a signaling mechanism.
>
>
> > He certainly seems to discuss economics from the standpoint of
> >Keynes sometimes.
>
>As I've probably said too many times, I think Keynes is the best
>economist the bourgeoisie has produced in the 20th century, and he
>has to be taken seriously by anyone considering him-/herself a
>Marxist, just as Marx himself took Smith and Ricardo very seriously.
>
>(((((((((((((
>
>Charles: By the way, isn't Chang's "regulated yet free market" a
>sort of elementary Keynesianism (and contradiction) ?
>
>We'd be better off if today's economists stuck to Smith and Ricardo more, no ?
For sure. But Keynes is important in thinking about economies with complex, developed financial sectors. I think he got lots of it wrong, but productively wrong.
>Speaking of ideology and science, seems to me the name changed from
>"political economy" to "economics" for ideological reasons in a
>double sense: 1) To pretend that it is an ideologically neutral
>science ;2) To pretend that economics in the actual world ( not the
>science) are not separate from politics ( if you follow me on the
>distinction), i.e. are ideologically neutral (i.e. hoodwinking).
As the saying goes, there's no place outside ideology. You're using "ideology" as a synonym for deception or false consciousness, but that's only one sense of ideology.
Doug