Economics just means studying how we distribute limited goods. It breaks down when goods aren’t limited (or rather, we have more of it than we can reasonably use), but we’re not quite at that level of post-scarcity for most things. Though we might be close enough to cover the first level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Economics as a practical discipline tends to assume capitalism. Economics can still be valid without assuming capitalism. There are tons of non-capitalist modes of distributing limited goods.
The assumption of capitalist-like structures is for a good reason. Because there is literally zero practical evidence that scarcity can exist without them in scalable economies. If you require scalability in the presence of scarcity, you will have markets, you will have currency, you will have competition, you will have investment, and so forth. At best these things can be mediated by centrally planned state capitalism. But pretending like this is not just another brand of harm reduction capitalism is rhetorically counterproductive.
The overwhelming consensus of the past century regarding Marxist economic theory is that it is incomplete at best because it takes a very naive view of scarcity. Where Marx requires revolution and then a bunch of hand waving, modern revisionism requires harm reduction and the gradual whittling down of scarcity over time. Historical materialism is certainly a pretty useful economic lens, but Marx really goes off the rails in the prescriptive conclusions he draws from that analytical framework.
Yes of course there are syndicalist models as well but these things are still fundamentally different approaches to harm reduction. Capitalism is a boogie man bad word for a number of different economic forces which are inevitable in the face of scarcity. Don’t get caught up in linguistic pigeonholes. The point is that we seek to meditate and mitigate these forces, not that we worship some particular dogma which pretends they can be eliminated.
I mean mainstream economics is a farce. MMT at least approaches sanity. Yeah you need Marxism-Leninism but there aren’t many of those economists in Western academia.
I’ve studied economics as a discipline too much not to acknowledge its institutional biases. The statement “economics isn’t real bro” is a joke, but it’s a joke about how bad the state of the academy is in promoting neoliberal economics.
If that weren’t true it wouldn’t be powerful enough to turn Argentina into a fourth world nation. Milei is a product of these academic institutions.
If you actually went to or taught at a university that eludes these biases like the Braudel fans at Binghampton, you wouldn’t be scolding me for making a joke about how stupid most economics degrees render people.
The ideology is often implicit in how the model is explained. For example, 2 simple facts that go unmentioned.
Only persons can be responsible for anything. Things, no matter how causally efficacious, can’t be responsible for what is done with them
The employer receives 100% of the property rights for the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs. The workers qua employees get 0% legal claim on that. This fact is obfuscated using the pie metaphor
Sure, in theory, that is what it should be about. In practice, many economists bias the theories they develop to make sure the conclude in favor of their own ideological biases. Often, metaphors are treated as deep truths while simple facts are treated as superficial and ignored or even obfuscated due to their ideological implications if they were plainly stated @science_memes
Economics just means studying how we distribute limited goods. It breaks down when goods aren’t limited (or rather, we have more of it than we can reasonably use), but we’re not quite at that level of post-scarcity for most things. Though we might be close enough to cover the first level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Economics as a practical discipline tends to assume capitalism. Economics can still be valid without assuming capitalism. There are tons of non-capitalist modes of distributing limited goods.
The assumption of capitalist-like structures is for a good reason. Because there is literally zero practical evidence that scarcity can exist without them in scalable economies. If you require scalability in the presence of scarcity, you will have markets, you will have currency, you will have competition, you will have investment, and so forth. At best these things can be mediated by centrally planned state capitalism. But pretending like this is not just another brand of harm reduction capitalism is rhetorically counterproductive.
The overwhelming consensus of the past century regarding Marxist economic theory is that it is incomplete at best because it takes a very naive view of scarcity. Where Marx requires revolution and then a bunch of hand waving, modern revisionism requires harm reduction and the gradual whittling down of scarcity over time. Historical materialism is certainly a pretty useful economic lens, but Marx really goes off the rails in the prescriptive conclusions he draws from that analytical framework.
Marx ≠ anti-capitalism
There are other modern anti-capitalist argument derived from the classical laborists such as Proudhon.
Markets ≠ capitalism
In postcapitalism, we can use markets where appropriate. We have practical examples of non-capitalist firms with worker coops and 100% ESOPs.
There are theoretical mechanisms for collective ownership that can be shown to be efficient like COST.
There are theoretical non-market democratic public goods funding mechanisms
@science_memes
Yes of course there are syndicalist models as well but these things are still fundamentally different approaches to harm reduction. Capitalism is a boogie man bad word for a number of different economic forces which are inevitable in the face of scarcity. Don’t get caught up in linguistic pigeonholes. The point is that we seek to meditate and mitigate these forces, not that we worship some particular dogma which pretends they can be eliminated.
Marx is incomplete. That doesn’t mean non-capitalist economics stopped with Marx.
Yes, that’s exactly what I am saying, but this is what MLs tend to believe.
I mean mainstream economics is a farce. MMT at least approaches sanity. Yeah you need Marxism-Leninism but there aren’t many of those economists in Western academia.
Removed by mod
I’ve studied economics as a discipline too much not to acknowledge its institutional biases. The statement “economics isn’t real bro” is a joke, but it’s a joke about how bad the state of the academy is in promoting neoliberal economics.
If that weren’t true it wouldn’t be powerful enough to turn Argentina into a fourth world nation. Milei is a product of these academic institutions.
If you actually went to or taught at a university that eludes these biases like the Braudel fans at Binghampton, you wouldn’t be scolding me for making a joke about how stupid most economics degrees render people.
Removed by mod
Economics departments are not real bro
The ideology is often implicit in how the model is explained. For example, 2 simple facts that go unmentioned.
@science_memes
Sure, in theory, that is what it should be about. In practice, many economists bias the theories they develop to make sure the conclude in favor of their own ideological biases. Often, metaphors are treated as deep truths while simple facts are treated as superficial and ignored or even obfuscated due to their ideological implications if they were plainly stated @science_memes