Chairman Mao and Comparative Institutional Analysis
6 March 2011 at 7:02 pm Peter G. Klein 2 comments
| Peter Klein |
Coase? Williamson? No, Mao Tse-Tung:
Concrete analysis of concrete conditions, Lenin said, is “the most essential thing in Marxism, the living soul of Marxism.” Lacking an analytical approach, many of our comrades do not want to go deeply into complex matters, to analyse and study them over and over again, but like to draw simple conclusions which are either absolutely affirmative or absolutely negative. The fact that our newspapers are lacking in analytical articles and that the habit of analysis is not yet fully cultivated in the Party shows that there are such shortcomings. From now on we should remedy this state of affairs.
(Thanks to Pablo for the tip.)
"I say to you, Comrades. . . . No more blackboard economics!"
Entry filed under: - Klein -, New Institutional Economics.
Organizations and Markets 
1. Mao not just a pretty face at Catallaxy Files | 7 March 2011 at 7:22 am
[…] Thanks to Pete Klein for this feed. […]
2.
Michael E. Marotta | 11 March 2011 at 4:31 pm
Not to be too kind to them, but Marxism assumes that history and economics are sciences. Thus, analysis of objective conditions is good.
On the other hand, postmodernists criticize Marxism for its Enlightenment agenda, claiming that social problems are “toroids” and “strange attractors.” It was Marxist Alan Sokal who finally had enough of such “fashionable nonsense.” Even Ayn Rand nodded to the intellectuals of the left, and identified the greatest enemy of capitalism not as Karl Marx but Immanuel Kant.