Marxists are no better or worse people than anyone else, some of them are indeed very interested in people’s lives, but I think we ought to look more carefully about how their theories are actually formed and what the proper function of theorising is, what role it ought to play. To my knowledge none of the great Marxists regarded the working classes as one homogenous heap. Every social class has its leaders, its advanced thinkers and doers, its movers and shakers, its conservative and progressive groupings, as well as its more backward elements. Obviously if you focus on the worst elements of a social class, those who are least socially and politically aware, then you are going to develop a rather pessimistic idea about what’s possible. But why should you do that? Why not try to be in the social vanguard of your society? Marxists often regard Marxism as a philosophy, but Marx & Engels themselves thought that philosophy was largely supplanted by science and empirical-practical verification. Gramsci is probably closer to the mark with his idea of a philosophy of practice, i.e. a viewpoint developed out of the conclusions drawn from experience that guides practice. But this suggests really a process of learning by doing, rather than a rigid adherence to an authorative doctrine, in which our own creativity and experience is just as important as what our predecessors contributed.

my mentioning the welfare theorems was basically to say the same thing as you—-they don’t support any particular pAreto optimum (distribution of income) so mike’s bringing them up does not support friedman really (who didn’t deal with initial conditions, which is also the problem with people who rely on coase’s theorem usually).
and i was criticizing some self-styled ‘heterodox’ economists who basically ignore this point and either beat dead horses about economics (or rather beat what they call a horse, even if its a rock, and look like they are killing it, like a brave and perceptive bullfighter.)

intellectual excercizes (possibly like physical, or creative ones) are fine—they ‘build strong character’ (eg john wayne—the bands MDC (hardcore) and JYB (gogo) both have good songs about john wayne; ishi and him are sortuh similar, like the proton/antiproton pairs). the connection of them to, say, ‘disconnects’ in minds and social realities is a difficult topic (though maybe I can get tenure at Yale doing its ‘cognitive bias’ and values project—-you know, do polls on the great martin luther ‘rodney’ king question ‘why Kant we all get along?’ Perhaps its categorical impariment?
write me a ref? or a cv?)

as i mentioned in my earlier excessverbiage/shakespearian classic blog post (already living forever out in the universe and being read by other plan-its), intellectual excercizes (such as social group therapy of some sort (think the federalist papers and const conv (constituional convention, or the convention that the speed of light is a constant—same difference) ) maybe if instead of prostelytizing using outdated slogans like at patriot rallys or promise keepers, people talked a bit about ‘pareto optima’, or even just welfare or justice, then some mental disconnects might be repaired along with the social. as i noted, this may be impossible (due to initial conditions) so maybe my choice fior epitaph will be an epithet, to keep in the spirit of the times. ‘the change—we need.’ (or for big thinkers, there’s biggie smalls’ ‘gimme the loot’.)

obviously the real intellectual excercize is to figure out how much the perfect information and rational self-interest assumptions need to be altered, to get beyond an ideal gas or perfect mechanical model of economic exchanges (and others). you need condensed matter physics, etc. i actually have an idea about how to do this, as illustrated above. and as noted, for another intellectual excercize you can then transform the imperfections out so Leibniitz (of candide) will be satisfied should his wave function encounter this blog post.

“You might not know that in the Friedman (neoclassical) argument, the distribution of wealth (property) is taken as given. That is, the best they can say is that under extremely rrestrictive assumptions, in market equilibrium, no one can be made better off without another being made worse off, GIVEN THE DISTRIBUTION OF INTITIAL ENDOWMENTS.”

and Ishi after having earlier suggesting that this discussion was “beating a dead horse” then later on proceeds to not only to keep kicking the deceased animal but to go on to excursion with the social welfare theorems as developed by the neo-Paretians (BTW a summary of which can be found at:
http://homepage.newschool.edu/het/essays/paretian/paretosocial.htm).

In fact it is probably not such a useless exercise because this points out that modern welfare economics does not necessarily support the conclusions that Friedman and his followers have wished to derive from it. As Paul Samuelson has often pointed out to derive the conclusion that any given Paretian optimality is also socially optimal we have to assume that the distribution of initial endowments was ethically acceptable. Such is not necessarily the case from the standpoint of either a utitlitarian ethic or a Rawlsian ethic.

Ishi mentions John Roemer, but most of Roemer’s points were made long ago by the Polish Marxist/neoclassical economist Oskar Lange, who likewise was an advocate of market socialism. (Lange’s position was that to understand how capitalist economies actually work, we have to turn to Marx, but to understand how to properly manage a socialist economy, then we have to turn to neoclassical economics).

What can we do? Joe Hill said it best, “Oraganise”. And he was talking about organising as a class to begin to the form the new society within the womb of the old one and, of course, abolishing the wage system in the process. The tactics of getting to a more democratic, relaxed set of social relations should most definitely be focussed on shorter work time; but not the kind the cappos want to impose, the kind where they drive down the standard of living of the working class in order to ‘solve’ their problems with the rate of profit. But, that kind of free-time can only be won if it is backed up by class conscious, democratic unionism, unionism based on the notion that the wage system is inherently exploitive, life damaging, alienating and anxiety creating. Well, that’s one Wob’s opinion anyway. ;p

The notion that there is some sort of economic fallacy basic to the aims and methods of trade unions – or more generally to inchoate beliefs of working people – is a polemic with a long, albeit tortuous, history that goes back at least to the Luddite uprisings of 1811-13 in England and the Swing Riots of 1830-31. An 1830 booklet issued by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, in response to the 1830 incidents, sought to “explain” to ordinary workers the proposition that “the results of machinery” (the title of the booklet) were to cheapen commodities and thus, ultimately, to expand trade and increase employment. Such an explanation presupposed that motives for breaking machines arose from a “misunderstanding” of the nature of machines rather than from rage at desperate economic circumstances and harsh political repression. The supposition sidesteps the likelihood that the underlying grievances were legitimate regardless of whether or not the ensuing destruction of property was either suitable or effectual.

In a 1859 article, “The Secret Organization of Trades,” Harriet Martineau claimed that the aim and object of trade unions was “to stint the action of superior physical strength, moral industry, or intelligent skill in order to protect the inferior workman from competition… in short, to apply all the fallacies of the Protective system to labour.” Martineau’s reference to the fallacies of protectionism echo the sentiments of Frederic Bastiat from a decade earlier, whose satirical treatment of the issue popularized the practice of ridiculing economic fallacies.

In an 1868 treatise on Workmen and Wages, James Ward claimed to have identified “the real cause of the objection to piecework and overtime…” which constituted “the fallacy which lies at the bottom of this whole system [of trade unions].” That fallacy was held to be:

…the view that wages being determined in their amount by importunity and combination, they form a fund for the general benefit of all, and that the fund gained by the contributions and exertions of all ought not to be encroached upon by the superior strength and dexterity of a few.

In the tradition of classical political economy, Ward accepted the doctrine of a “wage-fund,” the magnitude of which was given at any particular time. The fault of the unionist was that, without consideration for its source or continuance, “his aim was to get as much out of the wage-fund as possible.” Three years later, John Wilson added a new twist to wage-fund angle by attributing “the enforcement of all sorts of arbitrary restrictions on the combined workmen” to a “Unionist reading of the Wage-fund theory.” In the late 1880s, Alfred Marshall followed in this tradition when he posited the existence of a “work-fund” doctrine analogous to the, by now largely discredited (or drastically revised) wages-fund doctrine.

It would be useful at this point – before moving on to rebuttal – to summarize the vagaries in the fallacy story as it has unfolded over the years. The alleged objectives sought by workers have included resisting the introduction of machinery, piecework and overtime; standardization of wages without regard to effort or skill; and increasing wages without regard to output or market conditions. Meanwhile the alleged error has been to assume that the amount of wages or of work to be done is either constant or will not be affected by the productivity or otherwise of labour. The authors of these fallacy stories display attitudes that range from benign condescension toward the workers to abject hostility toward trade unions to cautious sympathy with both. The implied person who commits these fallacies is either painfully ignorant, negligent or – if rational at all – vicious.

Over the years, labour leaders and sympathetic writers repeatedly disavowed the intention to restrict output and the fallacious assumptions that go along with it. But it would be hard to find a more comprehensive and authoritative reply than the 921 page 11th Special Report of the U.S. Commissioner of Labor on Regulation and Restriction of Output prepared and edited mainly by John R. Commons and issued in 1904. A paragraph in the conclusion to that report neatly summed up why “the question of restriction of output… is not as simple as it has been supposed to be.” Investigators concluded that workers were increasingly insisting that changes in work organization, methods or materials be by mutual consent and this resulted in “restrictions of output” when compared to a hypothetical level that might be attained if employers could impose their efficiency plans at will. It was a simple, clear and reasonable explanation and one that didn’t require any elaborate speculation about fallacious theories or nefarious motives.