I model can suggust how things can work; economists often act as if they can show how things do work.
On Fri, Feb 06, 2009 at 07:15:05AM -0500, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Feb 5, 2009, at 11:59 PM, Mike Beggs wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 3:32 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Then he is either using "model" as a mere (and not too good) synony for
>>> "abstraction" or he is wrong. Models as used in economics havd no
>>> placve in Marx.
>>>
>>
>> If this is true, which I don't think it is, then it is so much the worse
>> for Marx. What do you see as the essential difference between 'model' and
>> 'abstraction'?
>
> Yeah, no kidding. A lot of model-building in orthodox econ is nonsense, but
> models are far from useless and I don't see how anyone acting in the spirit
> of Marx wouldn't want to appropriate bourgeois techniques toward better
> ends. What an anti-intellectual and self-marginalizing position on the part
> of Cde Cox.
>
> Doug
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-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu michaelperelman.wordpress.com