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Σαν σήμερα, την 5η Αυγούστου του 1895, πέθανε ο συνιδρυτής του Μαρξισμού Friedrich Engels. Η συνεισφορά του τόσο στην θεωρητική ανάλυση όσο και στην επαναστατική πολιτική υπήρξε καθοριστική, άσχετα με το γεγονός ότι ο ίδιος επέλεξε να κάνει το «δεύτερο βιολί». Σήμερα, η συμβολή του αυτή βρίσκεται στο στόχαστρο της επίθεσης «άσπονδων φίλων του Μαρξισμού». Τα βασικά σημεία της επίθεσης αυτής είναι ότι: (α) Ο Marx ήταν ένα φιλελεύθερο πνεύμα που ερευνούσε συνεχώς ζητήματα και που...

from Lars Syll Justice is an ambiguous concept. We use it daily and constantly. But what is justice, really? What should be considered just? How do we measure justice? Is justice the same as equality and impartiality? And is there only one form of justice, or do different notions of justice coexist? These are important questions to try to shed light on and answer. Otherwise, the concept of justice risks becoming just one of many empty and abstract clichés we use to dress our own interests...

from Peter Radford This is how I explain what has happened to myself. Nobody should begin without warning.  So we ought jot down some initial observations that provide a starting point for what follows.  Some will become highly relevant.  Others will fade as we dig deeper into our subject and discover that they were not germane to the main theme.  They are in no particular order, since imposing order suggests a level of understanding unjustified by experience.  We simply do not know what...

from Dean Baker That line is effectively the conventional wisdom among people in policy circles. If that seems absurd, then you need to think more about how many politicians and intellectual types are approaching climate change. Just this week, John Kerry, President Biden’s climate envoy, was in China. He was asking the Chinese government to move more quickly in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. President Xi told Kerry that China was not going to move forward its current target,...

In my previous post on utilitarianism, I started with two crucial observations. First, utilitarianism is a political philosophy, dealing with the question of how the resources in a community should be distributed. It’s not a system of individual ethics Second, (this shouldn’t be necessary to state, but it is), there is no such thing as utility. It’s a theoretical construct which can be used to compare different allocations of resources, not a number in people’s heads that can be...

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My fellow Crooked Timber blogger Ingrid Robeyns has long been making the case for limitarianism, that is, the idea that there should be an upper limit on the amount any one person can own or consume. As Ingrid has observed, limitarianism is a constraint, rather than a complete ethical principle, so it’s important to consider how it interacts with other principles. In the case of utilitarianism, the answer is surprisingly well, at least in (using Ingrid’s terminology) this and nearby...

from Asad Zaman and current issue of WEA Commentaries Ever since the spectacular failure of modern economic theory became obvious to all in the Global Financial Crisis, the search for alternative ways of organizing our economic affairs has intensified. The vast majority of alternatives under consideration offer minor tweaks and patches, remaining within the methodological framework of neoclassical economics. In contrast, Polanyi offers a radical alternative, with unique insights based on...

As nobody else bothers, I’m tinkering with designing a (badly needed) periodic table of prices. Look here and here. Economists are fond of ex post market prices – i.e. prices paid for actual transactions. But other kinds of prices abound. Administered prices, shadow prices, cost prices and more. Each of these prices are important and are used to influence the production and distribution of goods and services. Each of these are, separately, defined on all kind of webpages. but an...

from Junaid Jahangir and RWER issue 104 In terms of reviewing textbooks to teach economic inequality, three options are considered. First, the Mankiw, Kneebone, and McKenzie (2020) textbook, as I used it to teach microeconomics at the ECON 101 level. Second, the Ragan (2020) textbook, as it seems to be a bridge between neoclassical economics and perspectives found in options like the CORE text. Finally, the CORE textbook, which introduced a new module on teaching economic inequality in...