Let's look at wht this implies. Suppose the conversation involved differing opinions on who was the greatest sedond baseman of all time. In that case, the important thing is to understand the position of a second baseman rather than to understand the fiction of William Faulkner or Marx's critique of political economy. Is that correct?
Or take another angle. You think understanding "the economy" is important I gather. What is yourevidence that (a) "the economy" exists and (b) that it can be understood? Within a hundred years of the day Galileo muttered, Nevertheless, it moves, physics and astronomy had been placed on a firm foundation that in many ways , despite quantum mechanics and relativity, still is essential to understanding our world. Now that's an unfair comparison, I admit. Pysics is a rather special field and probably should not be regarded as the "model science." Still, like a "trout in the milk jar" (Thoreau) it gies one to think. Or take an object of study that some have observed is more complicated than the entire universe: the human brain. We don't understand it very well at all - but we certainly have a hell of a lot more firm knowledge of it than we have of the economy. We can at lleast answr the question, "What is the object of study of neuroscience?" We can't give an answer to the question, "What is the object of study of economics?"
Look, for two centuries a large number or really brilliant, hard working, and honest men and women have labored to "understand" this (non)thing you refer to as "the economy." Now let's try a thought experiment. Suppose you select a list of the 100 best and best intentioned economists in the world. Would you like to turn the government of the U.S. over to that panel? Or even to manage the economic policy of the federal government, it being understood that Congress could not veto anyof their policies. How about it? And incidentally, could they agree on a policy, or would they be the traditional herd of cats? And what do we mean when we say "federal economic policy"? How much does that cover? Or in attempting to answr that would you begin to realize how difficult it is to name the object of study of "economics" or "political economy." (The Greek word for economy meant management of the household; political economy means management of the polis.)
Now it is for most on this lsit highly debatable whether "capitalism" exists. It's pretty clear that Jim Blaut did not reallybelieve it existed; he wouldn't have been so foolish about history had be believed "capitalism" was real and existed. Now some of us, particularly those of us who find the work of Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood persuasive, believe capitalism exists, that it is an entity that, to some extent, can be understood. And the economists have never tried to understand it; they have only tried to understand some weird entity called "the economy." Of course they have never succeeded in that endeavor either: the squabbles among the best of them simply go on for ever.
How much of human life does the economy, or the study of the economy, included? Actually, I think capitalism includes only a small part of human life: it just happens to be the small part that reduces the rest of human life tochaos. That is one reason it might be important to understand capitalism rather than pursue a will-o-the-wisp called the economy. Or it might be important for a few at least to do so.
You might read Albritton's little book on Marx. (His major works sound pretty forbidding to me.) It's fun to rea and it explores some of the linkages between that entity called capitalism and the rest of human activity, including the activity of trying to understand the economy.
Carrol
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