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Karl Marx WAS a great economist. Is this something one is no longer allowed to say without being smeared as an extremist?

stale2002 6y ago
> Karl Marx WAS a great economist. He really was not. He was great at politics. He was great at taping into things that workers cared about. But his actual economics that he laid out, in Das Kapital? The actual mathmatical equations in it, and falsifiable predictions in that book? The labor theory of value? All pretty worthless. Basically no serious academic takes the labor theory of value seriously. It is non-sense. Heterodox economic theories are heterodox for a reason. That reason being that they are not reflective of reality.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  >> Karl Marx WAS a great economist. > He really was not. He was great at politics. Not in the governance sense (he wasn't a statesmen), so you must mean in the other sense ("activities within an organization that are aimed at improving someone's status or position"). But this is sort of a difference without a difference, right? For most of human history, people who were "great at X" were in truth at least as good at politics as the thing they're actually known for. Even e.g. Euclid was arguably a great geometer but an even greater politician. Hell, Pythagoras was literally a cult leader. With rare exceptions, your name isn't remembered by history unless you're good at politics. > Basically no serious academic takes the labor theory of value seriously. The labor theory of value is much older than Marx, and components of it are certainly taken seriously in management schools when talking about pricing services for example. Similarly, economists use components of other theories of value where it makes sense. I think it's more accurate to say that economics as a profession has moved on from these sorts of "generalizable theories of value" to give more nuanced analyses, which is quite different from saying that those theories proposed historically by Marx or Frisch or whoever have no influence. Anyways, can you define "serious academic" in a way that doesn't make this sentence tautological? There's no one who claims Das Kapital is the Bible of Economics, but the same is true for Wealth of Nations and basically any other historical text. That doesn't mean that Smith and Marx are irrelevant, though.
  - stale2002 6y ago
    > Anyways, can you define "serious academic" in a way that doesn't make this sentence tautological? Sure. Basically the entire field of modern day economics does not take the labor theory of value, in the way that Marx means it. In terms of an actual description of how economies work, almost all real life, professional, economists do not take Marxian "economics" seriously. > to give more nuanced analyses It is not a matter of something being "nuanced" or not. It is instead that the vast majority of modern day economists do not take Marxian economics seriously at all.
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      > Basically the entire field of modern day economics does not take the labor theory of value, in the way that Marx means it. Yeah but that's true for EVERY theory of value contemporaneous to Marx. Saying "economics reject the LTV" is in my mind a bit like saying that physicists reject Newtonian mechanics. It's both true but also severely under-estimates the significant influence of Newton on modern physics. >> to give more nuanced analyses > It is not a matter of something being "nuanced" or not. It is instead that the vast majority of modern day economists do not take Marxian economics seriously at all. I gave one specific example: management schools still draw from labor theories of value to explain competitive pressure and price discovery in the service sector. There are hundreds of other examples like this.
      - stale2002 6y ago
        > Saying "economics reject the LTV" is in my mind a bit like saying that physicists reject Newtonian mechanics. No. It is not rejecting it in the way that physicists reject Newtonian mechanics. Instead it is that most modern day economists reject Marxian economics in the same way that astronomers reject flat earthers. The labor theory of value is just completely bunk. Source: https://voxeu.org/article/marx-and-modern-microeconomics https://voxeu.org/article/marx-and-modern-microeconomics "Few economists doubt that Marx flunked economics" "Economists, looking back, have not found much to admire in Karl Marx" That is what I mean. Economists just don't take seriously much of anything that Marx has to say on the actual field of economics, on the same level as that of flat earthers. His only insights are maybe into politics. But not the actual field of economics. When economists are saying that he "flunked" economists, as quoted from the article, it is intended to imply that basically nothing that Marx had to say, on actual economics matters at all, and is so ridiculous that we should compare it to conspiracy theories, or flat earthers, or something else that is equally nonsensical.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Worthless or a stepping stone? The Platonic conception of knowledge is obvious nonsense today. I am, in my epistemology, superior to Plato. But it is named Platonic though I achieved the understanding of its flaws as a teenager. And even just for the conception of this epistemology, Plato is remembered. It is not known as Wiltordian epistemology after my teenage revelations. That's because in many things in science and knowledge, being among the first to predict things wrong in an interesting manner is valuable.

stale2002 6y ago

> Karl Marx WAS a great economist. He really was not. He was great at politics. He was great at taping into things that workers cared about. But his actual economics that he laid out, in Das Kapital? The actual mathmatical equations in it, and falsifiable predictions in that book? The labor theory of value? All pretty worthless. Basically no serious academic takes the labor theory of value seriously. It is non-sense. Heterodox economic theories are heterodox for a reason. That reason being that they are not reflective of reality.

throwawaygh 6y ago
>> Karl Marx WAS a great economist. > He really was not. He was great at politics. Not in the governance sense (he wasn't a statesmen), so you must mean in the other sense ("activities within an organization that are aimed at improving someone's status or position"). But this is sort of a difference without a difference, right? For most of human history, people who were "great at X" were in truth at least as good at politics as the thing they're actually known for. Even e.g. Euclid was arguably a great geometer but an even greater politician. Hell, Pythagoras was literally a cult leader. With rare exceptions, your name isn't remembered by history unless you're good at politics. > Basically no serious academic takes the labor theory of value seriously. The labor theory of value is much older than Marx, and components of it are certainly taken seriously in management schools when talking about pricing services for example. Similarly, economists use components of other theories of value where it makes sense. I think it's more accurate to say that economics as a profession has moved on from these sorts of "generalizable theories of value" to give more nuanced analyses, which is quite different from saying that those theories proposed historically by Marx or Frisch or whoever have no influence. Anyways, can you define "serious academic" in a way that doesn't make this sentence tautological? There's no one who claims Das Kapital is the Bible of Economics, but the same is true for Wealth of Nations and basically any other historical text. That doesn't mean that Smith and Marx are irrelevant, though.
- stale2002 6y ago
  > Anyways, can you define "serious academic" in a way that doesn't make this sentence tautological? Sure. Basically the entire field of modern day economics does not take the labor theory of value, in the way that Marx means it. In terms of an actual description of how economies work, almost all real life, professional, economists do not take Marxian "economics" seriously. > to give more nuanced analyses It is not a matter of something being "nuanced" or not. It is instead that the vast majority of modern day economists do not take Marxian economics seriously at all.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    > Basically the entire field of modern day economics does not take the labor theory of value, in the way that Marx means it. Yeah but that's true for EVERY theory of value contemporaneous to Marx. Saying "economics reject the LTV" is in my mind a bit like saying that physicists reject Newtonian mechanics. It's both true but also severely under-estimates the significant influence of Newton on modern physics. >> to give more nuanced analyses > It is not a matter of something being "nuanced" or not. It is instead that the vast majority of modern day economists do not take Marxian economics seriously at all. I gave one specific example: management schools still draw from labor theories of value to explain competitive pressure and price discovery in the service sector. There are hundreds of other examples like this.
    - stale2002 6y ago
      > Saying "economics reject the LTV" is in my mind a bit like saying that physicists reject Newtonian mechanics. No. It is not rejecting it in the way that physicists reject Newtonian mechanics. Instead it is that most modern day economists reject Marxian economics in the same way that astronomers reject flat earthers. The labor theory of value is just completely bunk. Source: https://voxeu.org/article/marx-and-modern-microeconomics https://voxeu.org/article/marx-and-modern-microeconomics "Few economists doubt that Marx flunked economics" "Economists, looking back, have not found much to admire in Karl Marx" That is what I mean. Economists just don't take seriously much of anything that Marx has to say on the actual field of economics, on the same level as that of flat earthers. His only insights are maybe into politics. But not the actual field of economics. When economists are saying that he "flunked" economists, as quoted from the article, it is intended to imply that basically nothing that Marx had to say, on actual economics matters at all, and is so ridiculous that we should compare it to conspiracy theories, or flat earthers, or something else that is equally nonsensical.
renewiltord 6y ago
Worthless or a stepping stone? The Platonic conception of knowledge is obvious nonsense today. I am, in my epistemology, superior to Plato. But it is named Platonic though I achieved the understanding of its flaws as a teenager. And even just for the conception of this epistemology, Plato is remembered. It is not known as Wiltordian epistemology after my teenage revelations. That's because in many things in science and knowledge, being among the first to predict things wrong in an interesting manner is valuable.