[lbo-talk] Does "Economics" have a Subject?

[Carrol Cox]

There are many pseudo-disciplines the subject of which cannot be identified.
My own field is an example. "Literature" does not name a coherent domain of
study; in effect, there is no such thing. The discipline of economics seems
to assume that there is a distinct entity, "The Economy," but this is
obvious nonsense. It is an arbitrary abstraction from ongoing social
relations, not one of which is a pure instance of an "economic
relationship." To speak of economics as a separate entity is to violate
Socrates' caution re the bad dialectician who breaks the bones rather than
separates the joints.

"Economics" is most interesting and useful when the text under consideration
would better be described as _history_. The same seems to go for the other
pseudo-sciences such as Sociology, and Political Science. None has a
distinct object of study, and work in each is intelligible only when it is
quote obviously "something else."

Carrol