Avant-Propos on The State of Europe:
This piece on Carl Menger once again in its broad outline wishes to focus on the "impotence" of the European State in the face of the all-out onslaught of Islamist terrorism. Just as Menger starts with "the individual", so does the European liberal-capitalist State begin first and foremost with the "rights" of the "individual", where individual "liberty" comes well before the "fraternity" that, in any case, can be founded only on the vaguest bourgeois notion of "equality" before the (bourgeois) law. The powerlessness of the European "res publica" founded on the possessive individualism of capitalist enterprise and markets was already evident from the slogan of the French Revolution.
To repeat what we have said here too many times already - a point made by Hegel in the Philosophy of History by reference to the Roman State - a State that is founded on the protection of the private rights of individuals, on property, is a contractual State - one that will never be able to protect its population from external attack. To descend to the absolutely banal, such a State is one in which when the very existence of its community is threatened, all that can be accomplished are fashion parades on the Champs Elysees or a bathetic rendition of "La Vie en Rose" by Madonna, or else the depositing of a funeral wreath at the Bataclan by Bono and his band! A bientot, mes amis!
“All things are subject to the law of cause and effect. This great principle knows no exception.” (Carl Menger, Principles of Economics, p.1.)
This piece on Carl Menger once again in its broad outline wishes to focus on the "impotence" of the European State in the face of the all-out onslaught of Islamist terrorism. Just as Menger starts with "the individual", so does the European liberal-capitalist State begin first and foremost with the "rights" of the "individual", where individual "liberty" comes well before the "fraternity" that, in any case, can be founded only on the vaguest bourgeois notion of "equality" before the (bourgeois) law. The powerlessness of the European "res publica" founded on the possessive individualism of capitalist enterprise and markets was already evident from the slogan of the French Revolution.
To repeat what we have said here too many times already - a point made by Hegel in the Philosophy of History by reference to the Roman State - a State that is founded on the protection of the private rights of individuals, on property, is a contractual State - one that will never be able to protect its population from external attack. To descend to the absolutely banal, such a State is one in which when the very existence of its community is threatened, all that can be accomplished are fashion parades on the Champs Elysees or a bathetic rendition of "La Vie en Rose" by Madonna, or else the depositing of a funeral wreath at the Bataclan by Bono and his band! A bientot, mes amis!
“All things are subject to the law of cause and effect. This great principle knows no exception.” (Carl Menger, Principles of Economics, p.1.)
Menger’s key
distinction between the individual
and the general – from the Untersuchungen to the Irrthumer – is aimed at the power of
theory to abstract from “concrete
phenomena” to “phenomenal forms”, conkreten
Erscheinungen and Erscheinungs-formen.
Here again is the Kantian dichotomy between intuition and categories which is
the origin of the Lukacsian “antinomies of bourgeois thought”. What Menger
never explains is why the concrete phenomenon should start from the individual
intended as “a single human being” as the foundation of “the science of
political economy” rather than, say, from a community or a class – because the
very notion of “individual” contains already a discrete “choice” of category
that will determine the content of the “phenomenal forms”. Far from being a
“scientific” foundation, the “choice” of the single human being as the
epistemological foundation or “concrete phenomenon” or “individual” as the
foundation for the “general”, as the concrete basis from which abstract laws of
economics are to be derived, is indeed a wholly partial and unfounded one –
again, from a “scientific” or “objective” perspective.
"In
contrast to the absolutism of theory," says Knies,39 "the historical
conception of
political economy is based on the following principle. The
theory of
political economy is also a result of historical development just
as economic
conditions of life are. It grows, in living connection with the
total
organism of a human and ethno-historical period, with and out of
the conditions
of time, of space, of nationality. It exists together with
them and
continues preparing for progressive development. It has its
line of
argument in the historical life of the nations, and must attribute to
its results
the character of historical solutions. Too, it can present general
laws in the
general part of economics in no other way than as historical
explication and progressive
manifestation of the truth. It can at every
stage present
itself only as the generalization of the truths recognized up
39 Knies, Politische Oekonomie nach geschichtlicher
Methode (1853), p. 19 and
(1882), p. 24.
116 ] BOOK TWO
to this
definite point of development, and cannot be declared absolutely
self-contained
according to sum or formulation. Furthermore, the absolutism
of the
theory, where it has obtained validity at one stage of historical
development
presents itself only as a child of this time and designates
a definite
stage in the historical development of political economy."
The error
which is the basis of the above conception of the nature of
the
historical orientation of research in the field of theoretical economics
is clear. The
individual phases of development of our science can be
understood historically,
to be sure, only in connection with the spatial
and temporal
conditions from which they have emerged. Or in other
words: a literary
history of our science with a correct comprehension of
its
(historical!) task must not overlook the connection between the individual
phases of its
development and spatial and temporal conditions.
This is,
however, a postulate of every literary history, even one of the
exact natural
sciences, of chemistry and physics, indeed, of any writing
of history in general.
However, it has no immediate relationship at all to
those postulates
of research which we have called the historical point of
view in theoretical economics
(Le., retaining the fact of the development
of economic
phenomena in the investigation of the general nature and the
general connection of the laws of economy).
The
historical development of a science, argues Menger here, must be distinguished
from the content of its scientific advance: whereas the former is doubtless
affected by ideographic or idiosyncratic factors, the latter cannot be so
affected by epistemological definition – because what is “scientific” cannot as
such be determined by idiosyncratic or “singular” factors. But here Menger
clearly misunderstands and so misrepresents the far more incisive point that
Knies was making in the quotation cited by Menger above. Knies is saying that
the “theory” of social reality and the social “reality” itself are effectively
one and the same thing in the sense that, first, our theory of reality is
limited by our present historical conditions, and second and most important,
the factors that condition our scientific search and discovery of “reality”,
whether physical or social, are the same ones that guide our theoretical
understanding of this “reality”. The fact that this “reality” is never
“perfectly” or completely understood is not due to some failure in our research
but to the fact that our scientific research into “reality” is reality itself! Reality is our activity!
Vivo ergo cogito, as Nietzsche
instructed us!
Menger’s
confusion of these elementary matters is quite evident in this passage as is
also the causational or aetiological approach to “the exact theory of political
economy”:
Among human efforts those which are aimed at the
anticipation and
provision of material (economic) needs are
by far the most common and
most important. In the same way, among
human impulses that which
impels each individual to strive for his well-being is by far the most common
and most
powerful. A theory which would teach us to what crystallizations
of human
activity and what forms of human phenomena action
oriented to
the provision of material needs leads, on the assumption of
the free play
of that powerful economic impulse, uninfluenced by other
impulses and
other considerations (particularly error or ignorance); a
theory, especially, which would teach us what quantitative
effects would
be produced by a definite quantity of the
influence in question: such a
theory simply
must provide us with a certain understanding. It cannot
provide
understanding of human phenomena in their totality or of a concrete
portion
thereof, but it can provide understanding of one of the most
important
sides of human life. “The exact theory
of political economy" is
a theory of this kind, a theory which teaches us to
follow and understand
in an exact way the manifestations of human
self-interest in the efforts of
economic
humans aimed at the provision of their material needs. (Investigations, p.87.)
……….
And
Helvetius, Mandeville,
and A. Smith
knew just as well as any adherent of the historical school of
German
economics that self-interest does not exclusively influence the
phenomena of
human life. If the last of these had only written his own
theory of
public spirit! What distinguishes him and his school from our
historians is
the fact that he neither confused the history of economy with
its theory nor
even followed one-sidedly that orientation of research
which I
designated above with the expression empirical-realistic.
Nor,
finally, did
he become a victim of the misunderstanding of seeing in theoretical
investigations
conducted from the point of view of the free play of
human self-interest uninfluenced by other powers the
acknowledgement
of the
"dogma" of human self-interest as the only actual mainspring of
human actions. (p.88)
Menger’s
“empirical-realistic” method presumes that there is an under-lying (literally, sub-stantial) reality that scientific
activity actually dis-covers or un-covers or researches pro-gressively over time. But this notion of Progress is extremely fatuous in any real epistemological sense
because what we “discover” as we proceed with scientific research is that this
research as activity - and not any under-lying,
essential “reality” - is the real essence of science! The insuperable problem
with Menger’s specific argument is, of course, that it is quite impossible to
identify “individual self-interest” in any way whatsoever, and certainly not in
the “quantitative” sense that he clearly intends – as a determinant of market
prices, still less as a determinant of value. The problem is not that Adam
Smith or whoever failed to
distinguish between self-interest and other human interests; the problem is that it is impossible to make such a
distinction - and therefore their attempts to put economic inquiry on solid “scientific”
and non-political or non-ethical grounds were doomed from the start! The
distinction between “positive” and “normative” proves once again to be most
elusive for bourgeois science.
Indeed, Menger is so
confused about these conceptual relations that he is forced to defend his
isolation of the single human being as the “individual” of economic theory by
presenting it as the ready-made “individual concrete phenomenon” on which the
“phenomenic forms” of economic theory” are based! This is clearly a circuitous
definition in which the “individual” as against the “singular” is what lends
itself to theorizing through the “typical” and, vice versa, the typical is what
is yielded by the theoretical analysis of the individual! The two concepts –
the individual and the typical – hold each other up like two drunken sailors
leaning against a lamp-post!
Menger
fails to identify to any degree whatsoever what makes an individual a concrete phenomenon and what makes it
only a “singular phenomenon”. Similarly, he makes us none the wiser about the
distinction between individual and general, concrete phenomenon and phenomenic
forms. It is quite obvious in the passage below that Menger bases his
distinctions on vague notions of “history” and “theory”. But we cannot identify
this difference if we simply define “individual” and “general” or “typical” or
“form” with “theory”, and “singular” and “concrete phenomenon” with “history”.
Indeed, as this long passage illustrates quite conclusively, Menger seems to
think that a simple distinction between singular and collective, on one hand,
and concrete phenomenon or individual and typical on the other is sufficient to
clarify his overall methodological aim of isolating the general from the
individual.
2 See Appendix
I: "The Nature of National Economy." 3 The "individual" is
by no means to be confused with the "singular," or, what is the same
thing, individual phenomena are by no means to be confused with singular
phenomena. For the opposite of "individual" is "generaL"
whereas the opposite of a "singular phenomenon" is the
"collective phenomenon." A definite nation, a definite state, a
concrete economy, an association, a community, etc., are examples of individual
phenomena, but by no means of singular phenomena (but of collective phenomena
instead); whereas the phenomenal forms of the commodity, of the use value, of
the entrepreneur, etc., are indeed general, but not collective phenomena. The
fact that the historical sciences of economy represent the individual phenomena
of the latter by no means excludes their making us aware of these from the
collective point of view.
Menger is confusedly
aware of this, which is why he hastens to distinguish between “single” and
“collective” phenomena – again to stress that “individual” does not mean
“single” as distinct from “collective” – that, in other words, the scientific
foundation of political economy cannot be purely numerical. But if “individual” does not mean “single”, if it is to
mean, as Menger intends, “concrete phenomenon”, in what way can the single individual with which he starts
his “science” be or represent the “concrete phenomenon” on which the phenomenic
forms of “the exact theory of political economy” are to be erected?
This is precisely the error into which Menger has fallen. For, in selecting the
single human being as the theoretical basis or “individual” from which his
“general” is to be derived, he has failed to specify what makes a single human
being “individual” rather than just “singular”! The only factor that he can
identify is “human self-interest”. But any student of human history and human
affairs should know that “human self-interest” is simply impossible to define
and to theorise for “economic” purposes! Furthermore, Menger simply assumes, quite
unjustifiably, that human “material needs” are ipso facto “economic”: but this assumption is entirely wrong! If by
“economic” we mean “exchange of goods by different legal owners”, it is clear
that this is both practically and historically a much narrower area of “human
material needs” and of human activity. And this is what Knies was indicating in
the quotation above.
Individualism
presupposes inter-subjectivity and ownership, and both presuppose a social
definition of Value, - which is consequently why “subjective value” is an
oxymoron. If you asked Menger what makes self-interest “economic”, he would say
that it is “material needs”. But material needs are not and cannot be confined
to “individuals” because it is quite simply impossible to parcel out “social
needs” into “individual needs” just as it is impossible to dissect social
labour into “individual labours”!
If
you asked Menger - and all bourgeois economists -, what determines market prices, he would say it is self-interest and
specifically “economic” self-interest. But then, if you asked him what measures self-interest, he would say
that it is market prices! The identification and measurement of
“self-interest”, at least in a causative or aetiological and then even
axiological sense (in terms of the ethical claim of producers to products) is
the “anthropological” conundrum with which Menger struggled most of his later
life: his burgeoning yet fruitless studies in ethnography and his preoccupation
with the theory of money truly expose this “desperation” in his theoretical
quest, as Hayek attests:
But his
interests and the scope of the proposed work continued to expand to wider and
wider circles. He found it necessary to go far in the study of other
disciplines. Philosophy, psychology and ethnography claimed more and more of
his time, and the publication of the work was again and again postponed. In
1903 he went so far as to resign from his chair at the comparatively early age
of 63 in order to be able to devote himself entirely to his work, Hayek, “Carl
Menger”, Intro. to Principles, p.32)
The normal
function of organisms is conditioned by the function
of their
parts (organs), and these in turn are conditioned
by the
combination of the parts to form a higher unit, or by
the normal
function of the other organs.-A similar observation
about social
phenomena.-Organisms exhibit a purposefulness
of their
parts in respect to the function of the whole
unit, a
purposefulness which is not the result of human calculation,
however.-Analogous
observation about social phenomena.-
The idea of
an anatomical-physiological orientation
of research
in the realm of the social sciences results as a
methodological
consequence of these analogies between social
structures and natural organisms. (Headings to Part 3 of
‘Investigations’)
Schmoller1
retorted in a polemical form which was necessitated by the occasion, but as
regards the subject-matter his approach was by no means simply a negative one. Already
at this time he recognized not only that some of Menger's critical observations
were justified but also how essentially similar the causal nexus in social
science and natural science is; he also described the explanation of social
phenomena in the form of cause and effect and in the form of laws—for him at
this time both coincided—as the aim of scientific effort. Indeed
we find even the far-reaching proposition that all perfect science is
'deductive', that is, that the state of ideal perfection is only reached when
it has become possible to explain concrete phenomena completely with the help
of theoretical premises. This proposition implies the acknowledgment that such
a state of the science is possible in principle—even if in actual fact it
HISTORICAL SCHOOL
AND MARGINAL UTILITY 171
should remain unattainable
for us. It also implies a complete rejection of the specifically historical
belief in the 'incalculable’ and essentially 'irrational' nature of social
events.
The
aim of all “scientific activity”, of what Nietzsche called with awesome perspicacity
“the will to Truth”, is to arrive at the total “deducibility” of life: “that
is, that state of ideal perfection where it becomes possible to explain
concrete phenomena completely with the help of theoretical premises”. To
explain….and, most important, to predict!
Schumpeter meaningfully leaves out the necessary corollary to “the state of
ideal perfection” that scientific activity is truly aimed at – not least in the
field of “economic science”. The true aim of scientific truth is to remove the
normative sphere from human action. Either science is “perfect” and impervious
to the sphere of choice and ethics – to values -, or else it is imperfect and
cannot be “science” at all! If science is perfect deduction or calculation, no
room can be left for history in the field of science. This is precisely what
Schumpeter says in the quotation above: This “implies a complete rejection of the specifically historical belief in
the ‘incalculable’ and essentially ‘irrational’ nature of social events”.
For
it makes no sense to think that an individual’s behavior is “idio-syncratic” –
meaning “irrational” – whereas the behavior of many individuals becomes more
“rational” by reason of the larger numbers. It makes even less sense to
associate “irrationality” or “idiosyncrasy” with “freedom”. These are fallacies
into which the Old Historical School very easily fell, only to be attacked by
the Historical School of Law (Savigny, Jhering) even before Weber (Roscher und Knies). Indeed, as Weber
duly pointed out, “rationality” in the sense of “acting in one’s own interest”
and not “irrationality” constitutes the true “freedom” of the individual in
society.
But
here already, with Savigny and the Historical School of Law and then
Windelband, “rationality” is dictated by numbers, by the nomo-thetic. More correctly, rationality no longer has any substantive ethical value in terms of
practical human action as it always had in all Western metaphysics from Plato
onwards. With the Neoclassics, and explicitly with Weber, rationality becomes
naked Rationalisierung – a specific methodical and therefore “rational” –
“rational” because methodical! - exercise of social power aimed at maximizing
the accumulation of capital or objectified labour.
Menger
fails to see just how problematic this nexus between individual idiosyncrasy or
“freedom” and general or typical nomothetic “predictability” is, and then above
all how impossible the distinction between “individual or concrete phenomena”
and the “typical forms”, both in terms of the choice of direction of
scientific “research” (Weber, Wissenschaft
als Beruf) and the choice of application of that “research”. And finally
between “laws” and “things”.
Weber
and Menger are right to insist that what is irrational is the individual-social
distinction. Yet neither of them was ever able to reconcile individual content and general form – the concrete and the
abstract in social theory.
I wish to
contest the opinion of those who question the existence of laws of economic
behavior by referring to human free will, since their argument would deny
economics altogether the status of an exact science. Whether and under what
conditions a thing is useful to me,
whether and under what conditions it is a good,
whether and under what conditions it is an economic good, whether and under
what conditions it possesses value
for me and how large the measure of
this value is for me, whether and under what conditions an economic exchange of goods will take place between two economizing
individuals, and the limits within which a price
can be established if an exchange does occur—these and many other matters are
fully as independent of my will as any law of chemistry is of the will of the
practicing chemist. The view adopted by these persons rests, therefore, on an
easily discernible error about the proper field of our science. For economic
theory is concerned, not with practical rules for economic activity, but with the conditions
under which men engage in provident activity directed to the satisfaction of
their needs. Economic theory is related to the practical activities of
economizing men4 in much the same way that chemistry is related to the
operations of the practical chemist. Although
reference to freedom of the human will may well be legitimate as an objection
to the complete predictability of
economic activity, it can never have force as a denial of the conformity to definite laws of
phenomena that condition the outcome of the economic activity of men and are
entirely independent of the human will. (Principles, Preface, p.48)
Menger wisely draws a
distinction, then, between “the complete
predictability of economic activity”, which would in fact turn economic
theory into a perfect “science”, and “the conformity to definite laws of
phenomena that condition the outcome of the economic activity”. In other words,
what makes economic science consistent with free human activity is the fact
that science cannot entirely predict or determine human choices, but it can
specify the “conditions” of those choices or activity. But given that
scientific activity, by definition, will never reach this state of “ideal
perfection”, of “complete predictability”, it is utterly evident that “science”
can never be “science” because it must always and everywhere remain “scientific
activity”. There can never be, therefore, what Hayek and Robbins were aiming at
when they described economics as “the science
of choice” – for the simply
devastating reason that perfect science leaves us no choice, and imperfect
science itself can only be a “choice”, an “activity”! Thus, “scientific choice”
is either a pleonasm – a petitio principii -, or else it is an oxymoron – a
contradictio in adjecto. Economics then becomes “the choice of the science of
choice” that is, a normative and political decision to apply a specific
“method” prescribed by “economists” to the choice of social policy!
Interestingly,
Menger includes in the domain of economics the question of “whether” something
is “useful”. But then the question of “will” must be included unless we assume
that some exchanges must take place and the exchange is pure barter. This
“anthropology” is something the other Neoclassics will omit from their
“science” because it points to the uncomfortable sphere of use values that are
supposedly only “subjective”. Of course, marginal utility theory cannot be
concerned with use values because it claims that they are inscrutable,
metaphysical entities. Menger’s “empirical-realistic method” reasons in
humanistic essentialist or anthropological terms of cause and effect, of
“wealth”. By contrast, utility can only be thought of in relative and
subjective terms of potential “exchange” – in terms of “marginal utility”. But if these matters of “will” are omitted, the
sphere of “whether” and “usefulness” is barred from economics! If they are
excluded from economic inquiry, then the content
of economics is emptied out: economics becomes pure exchange, pure formal
mathematical relations whereby “there is no change
in the exchange”! Economics then
becomes a study not of use values or technical pro-duction but a mere “tool”
(cf. Schumpeter adopting Joan Robinson’s “box of tools” definition of
economics) indicating what prices may signify in terms of inscrutable and
unknowable, wholly subjective “utilities”. Menger’s subjectivism thus needs to
be distinguished from the pure self-interest of neoclassical economic analysis.
Note
how Schumpeter distinguishes, in a quotation given above, between “cause and
effect” and “economic laws” – suggesting that “the box of tools” contains just
“tools of analysis” and not empirical findings of causal relationships – which both Menger and Schmoller did:
He [Schmoller] also described the explanation of
social phenomena in the form of cause and effect and in the form of laws—for him at this time both coincided—as
the aim of scientific effort.
This
is similar to Hayek’s pointing out Menger’s “error” of seeing economic laws as
“causational” whereas they are means-ends, science-of-choice, “rational” or “pure
logic of choice” relations:
2. An
exception should, perhaps, be made for Hack’s review in the Zeitschrift für die gesamte
Staatswissenschaft, 1872, who not only emphasized the excellence of the
book [Menger’s Principles] and the novelty of its method of approach, but
also pointed out as opposed to Menger that the economically relevant
relationship between commodities and wants was not that of cause and effect but
one of means and end. (Hayek
at p.22, fn.2)
Thus,
Hayek like Schumpeter draws a clear contrast between the Aristotelianism of
Menger and the clearly Neo-Kantian and Machian orientation of the Austrian
School from Mises onwards. This vital distinction wholly eludes Peter Klein in
his introduction to the Principles
where he confuses these two very different approaches:
Economics, for Menger, is the
study of purposeful human choice, the
relationship between means and ends [m.e.]. “All things are subject to the law of cause and effect,” he begins
his treatise. “This great principle knows no exception.”2 Jevons and Walras
rejected cause and effect in favor of simultaneous determination, the technique
of modeling complex relations as systems of simultaneous equations in which no
variable “causes” another. Theirs has become the standard approach in
contemporary economics, accepted by nearly all economists but the followers of
Carl Menger,
(Intro. to Menger’s Principles, at
p.8):
Here
Klein mistakenly conflates what he intended to distinguish – that is, Menger’s cause-and-effect approach against the
mathematical approach of neoclassical analysis. The mathematical approach of
Jevons and Walras is based more on a neo-Kantian formalism of equivalence or
indifference, so that actual use values and quantities are irrelevant, only
ratios of exchange measurable ultimately by a numeraire are possible. All exchange ratios or “prices” are
relative and can be fixed only at equilibrium, which is not a point in time but
a pure mathematical entity. Menger instead was clearly of the view that
economics was not merely a “tool” of analysis but actually an “empirical-realistic” science:
41 Economics has to investigate
not only the general nature of those phenomena of human economy which are of
"economic" nature, as for example, market price, rates of exchange
and stock market quotations, currency, bank notes, commercial crises, etc. It
also has to investigate the nature of the singular phenomena of human economy,
e.g., the nature of the needs of the individual, the nature of goods, the
nature of barter, indeed, even the nature of those phenomena which, being of
purely subjective nature, simply appear in the individual, e.g., use value in
its subjective form. How could economics draw exclusively on history? To
conceive of history as an exclusive empirical basis of the social sciences is a
glaring error….(Investigations,
p.118)
Classical economics
abstracts from use values by restricting their “supply” to what is pro-duced so that only the partial allocation
of the total Value (the quantity of labour) to individual items is measured.
This supply is taken to be an exogenous amount dependent of the available quantity of “labour” and its
productivity in various processes of production. This allocation is then called
“exchange value” and the question of use value is eliminated. Except that the
substance and the measure are fused and confused as “labour” rather than
distinguished as living labour and labour-power
respectively so that the intensity of labour (the temporal intensity of labour,
Marx’s socially necessary labour time, which is not “necessary” at all – it is
simply violence) is left to one side. This mistaken identification by the
Classical economists of the substance and measure of value in “labour” is the
reason why “labour” and “Value” become metaphysical entities for the
Neoclassics.
Menger’s astute
criticism of the Classical Labour Theory of Value (in the Principles, Appendices C and D on the “nature” and the “measure of
value”, respectively) is precisely that “labour” cannot be at once the content
or substance of Value, its “nature”,
and also its measure, just as a metre
is not space and a second is not time – something that nearly every physicist
(cf. Stephen Hawking) fails to understand! This objection formed the entire
basis of Marx’s critique of political
economy as the metaphysics of labour – the distinction between concrete or
living labour (Arbeit) and its
abstract or crystallised form as imposed by capitalists, that is to say, labour-power
(Arbeits-kraft). (On Marx’s discovery
of the Doppelcharakter of labour in
capitalism, the fundamental work is M. Tronti, Operai e Capitale.) Marx’s critique clearly did not intend labour
value to be an absolute but rather a relative quantity in that “socially
necessary labour time” can refer to the labour time made “socially necessary”
through the political violence of capitalists. Bohm-Bawerk’s critique of Marx
will move from this “quantitative” – hence “essentialist” and objectivist –
misunderstanding of Marx’s critique of Value, which Menger was the first to
eschew despite his Aristotelian
straying.
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