David Laibman - Political Economy After Economics: Scientific Method and Radical Imagination

Political Economy After Economics

The magnificent dynamics and broad social focus of the classical political economists were replaced, at the end of the nineteenth century, by mathematically structured abstract models of competition among individuals and firms. Should we reject modern economics and go back to the grand philosophical approaches of Adam Smith and Karl Marx (among others)? Or should we redevelop and strengthen those approaches by incorporating the more recent model-building methods? The question answers itself.

Chapter by chapter, this book examines a wide range of economic problems, among others: technical change and the rate of profit, value and price formation in capitalist economies, classical (as opposed to textbook) approaches to supply and demand, rationing and price control, the impact of government policy on economic activity, and the nature and role of incentives in a model of socialist planning that is both central and decentralized. In each case, it is shown that formal economic-theory methods can be used to support, rather than to obscure, the core insight of critical political economics: the economy is really an aspect of a deeper system of social relations, with huge implications for power, conflict, and social transformation.

This re-incorporation of economics into political economy is one (small, but not insignificant) element in a larger project: to place all of the resources of present-day social-scientific research at the service of increasing democracy, in an ultimate direction toward socialism in the classic sense. An economics-enriched political economy is, above all, empowering; working people in general can calculate, build models, think theoretically, and contribute to a human-worthy future, rather than leaving all this to their betters.

David Laibman is Professor of Economics (retired) at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is also Editor of Science & Society.

Routledge frontiers of political economy

1 Equilibrium Versus Understanding

Towards the rehumanization of economics within social theory
Mark Addleson

2 Evolution, Order and Complexity

Edited by Elias L. Khalil and
Kenneth E. Boulding

3 Interactions in Political Economy

Malvern after ten years
Edited by Steven Pressman

4 The End of Economics

Michael Perelman

5 Probability in Economics

Omar F. Hamouda and
Robin Rowley

6 Capital Controversy, Post Keynesian Economics and the History of Economics

Essays in honour of Geoff Harcourt, volume one
Edited by Philip Arestis, Gabriel Palma and Malcolm Sawyer

7 Markets, Unemployment and Economic Policy

Essays in honour of Geoff Harcourt, volume two
Edited by Philip Arestis, Gabriel Palma and Malcolm Sawyer

8 Social Economy

The logic of capitalist development
Clark Everling

9 New Keynesian Economics/Post Keynesian Alternatives

Edited by Roy J. Rotheim

10 The Representative Agent in Macroeconomics

James E. Hartley

11 Borderlands of Economics

Essays in honour of Daniel R. Fusfeld
Edited by Nahid Aslanbeigui and Young Back Choi

12 Value, Distribution and Capital

Essays in honour of Pierangelo Garegnani
Edited by Gary Mongiovi and Fabio Petri

13 The Economics of Science

Methodology and epistemology as if economics really mattered
James R. Wible

14 Competitiveness, Localised Learning and Regional Development

Specialisation and prosperity in small open economies
Peter Maskell, Heikki Eskelinen, Ingjaldur Hannibalsson, Anders Malmberg and Eirik Vatne

15 Labour Market Theory

A constructive reassessment
Ben J. Fine

16 Women and European Employment

Jill Rubery, Mark Smith, Colette
Fagan and Damian Grimshaw

17 Explorations in Economic Methodology

From Lakatos to empirical philosophy of science
Roger Backhouse

18 Subjectivity in Political Economy

Essays on wanting and choosing
David P. Levine

19 The Political Economy of Middle East Peace

The impact of competing trade agendas
Edited by J.W. Wright, Jnr

20 The Active Consumer

Novelty and surprise in consumer choice
Edited by Marina Bianchi

21 Subjectivism and Economic Analysis

Essays in memory of Ludwig Lachmann
Edited by Roger Koppl and Gary Mongiovi

22 Themes in Post-Keynesian Economics

Essays in honour of Geoff Harcourt, volume three
Edited by Claudio Sardoni and Peter Kriesler

23 The Dynamics of Technological Knowledge

Cristiano Antonelli

24 The Political Economy of Diet, Health and Food Policy

Ben J. Fine

25 The End of Finance

Capital market inflation, financial derivatives and pension fund capitalism
Jan Toporowski

26 Political Economy and the New Capitalism

Edited by Jan Toporowski

27 Growth Theory

A philosophical perspective
Patricia Northover

28 The Political Economy of the Small Firm

Edited by Charlie Dannreuther

29 Hahn and Economic Methodology

Edited by Thomas Boylan and
Paschal F. O'Gorman

30 Gender, Growth and Trade

The miracle economies of the postwar years
David Kucera

31 Normative Political Economy

Subjective freedom, the market and the state
David Levine

32 Economist with a Public Purpose

Essays in honour of John
Kenneth Galbraith
Edited by Michael Keaney

33 Involuntary Unemployment

The elusive quest for a theory
Michel De Vroey

34 The Fundamental Institutions of Capitalism

Ernesto Screpanti

35 Transcending Transaction

The search for self-generating markets
Alan Shipman

36 Power in Business and the State

An historical analysis of its concentration
Frank Bealey

37 Editing Economics

Essays in honour of Mark Perlman
Hank Lim, Ungsuh K. Park and
Geoff Harcourt

38 Money, Macroeconomics and Keynes

Essays in honour of Victoria Chick, Volume 1
Philip Arestis, Meghnad Desai and Sheila Dow

39 Methodology, Microeconomics and Keynes

Essays in honour of Victoria Chick, Volume 2
Philip Arestis, Meghnad Desai and Sheila Dow

40 Market Drive and Governance

Reexamining the rules for economic and commercial contest
Ralf Boscheck

41 The Value of Marx

Political economy for contemporary capitalism
Alfredo Saad-Filho

42 Issues in Positive Political Economy

S. Mansoob Murshed

43 The Enigma of Globalisation

A journey to a new stage of capitalism
Robert Went

44 The Market

Equilibrium, stability, mythology
S.N. Afriat

45 The Political Economy of Rule Evasion and Policy Reform

Jim Leitzel

46 Unpaid Work and the Economy

Edited by Antonella Picchio

47 Distributional Justice

Theory and measurement
Hilde Bojer

48 Cognitive Developments in Economics

Edited by Salvatore Rizzello

49 Social Foundations of Markets, Money and Credit