I am not afraid. I'll read Hayek or Friedman. Would like some suggestions. I want to be able to have a decent grasp on modern economics and still tell be able to tell people to go fuck themselves.

  • RowPin [they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    It's the boring answer, but I'd honestly just say Capital. Marx constantly quotes economists not only to show why they are wrong in the 'logical error' sense, but to show how they could not make certain conclusions without coming in to contradiction with the inherent standpoint of economics: that of bourgeois society. This was why Marx believed classical economists like Smith or Ricardo were useful: they were attempting to objectively explain the economic development and new form of society unfolding around them, even as Marx knew their outlook was necessarily deficient. These classical economists, being the "theoreticians of the bourgeoisie", ran in to contradictions in their theories because they assumed they were dealing with a wholly rational world, whereas Marx shows not only their logical flaws, but that the contradictions Smith & Ricardo ran in to were the contradictions of life.

    But, what Marx wanted to do was trace, in the most highly developed work of bourgeois thought, the 'inner coherence' of the various forms of social relations whose inhumanity had come to appear natural. Reading Marx is sufficient here for both why classical economics is wrong, and the standpoint of economics as a whole. If you do proceed past Smith/Ricardo, one comes to the vulgar economists. Here is how Marx spoke of them:

    [They] only flounder around within the apparent framework of those relations, ceaselessly ruminate on the materials long since provided by scientific political economy and seek there plausible explanations of the crudest phenomena for the domestic purposes of the bourgeoisie. Apart from this, the vulgar economists confine themselves to systematising, in a pedantic way, and proclaiming for everlasting truths, the banal and complacent notions held by the bourgeois agents of production about their own world, which is to them the best possible one.

    Political economy's decline from its apex in Ricardo was in conjunction with the bourgeoisie losing its revolutionary role, and is why the classical economist is an extinct breed past the 1830s - all that exists now are vulgar economists, like the ones you mention. They merely express uncritically the basic assumptions of this form of society and tend towards reality denial. (Most do not even care about the charge that 'their models are wrong': they enjoy this criticism because it means they can pseudo-philosophically pontificate on the irrationality of humans & other gobbledyremoved.) Compare how Marx speaks here to what he says of the classical economists, "who since the time of W. Petty, have investigated the real internal framework of bourgeois relations of production".

    Vulgar economy does not even pretend to investigate; they merely give a semblance of administrative technique to the bourgeoisie and educate other aspiring quacks. Even their most simple statements are inane and tautological:

    Money is everything you can pay with. (Preiser, Modern Economics).

    "To pay" means to spend money for a good or service: thus it should read "Money is everything you can use money for." Great insight!

    Regardless, for amusement, there are some more modern critiques of economics, albeit I do not know how well one will understand them without Marx as a base.

    A critique of marginalism: https://libcom.org/library/critique-bourgeois-science-microeconomics-explanation-value-invention-marginal-utility-m

    A short critique of social sciences/economics: http://ruthlesscriticism.com/function.htm

    Capital's 150th anniversary and a rebuttal to its bourgeois reviewers: https://libcom.org/library/150-years-capital-its-bourgeois-reviewers-gegenstandpunkt

    Bukharin's ABC of Communism: https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/index.htm

    I have not read the last one, myself, although I believe it contains a rebuttal to Bohm-Bawerk's nonsense thrashing Marx. The other group is good, albeit with some reservations that they do not fully understand communism or Marx (they're a circle of academics). I don't know if anyone has done one for the economists you mention, but the articles should still contain their sources for economic textbooks & such.

    • ShoutyMcSocialism [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      I just read the first twenty pages of Capitalism and Freedom. Friedman coming with such bangers as "freedom is the ability to pick neck tie colors."