EDITORIAL PERSPECTIVES - FALL 2001 (continued)

The crucial limitations of the dominant neoclassical ideology are thus revealed when that ideology is considered in its pure form – on the abstract terrain where "market equilibrium" is efficient and optimal. The students' spontaneous opposition to abstract theory, and its embodiment in mathematical models, thus plays into the hands of the neoclassical nihilists, who claim to agree that everything is in fact more complex than the simple models suggest and invite the post-autistic students to join with them in exploring that complexity. This move, however, evades the real issue: the existence of an alternative and more powerful simple model. ⁽³⁾ It should be unnecessary to add that the alternative core model will not be fruitful unless it too is developed and extended via increasingly complex versions and approaches that approximate ever more closely to reality. Moreover, the Marxist alternative has at its center the complex interface between "economic" and other instances of social life, refusing to allow economic abstraction to obfuscate the social and historical nature of the reality that is our object of investigation.

All that said, it remains true that abstraction and logic – and therefore mathematics – are central tools for any alternative economics that hopes to challenge and eventually displace the neoclassical position. I would remind students and others who are suspicious of these formalisms that it was Bakunin who accused Marx of theoretical autism. He said (as reported in John Lewis' Karl Marx), "Marx spoils the workers; he makes logic-choppers out of them." If Marx, not Bakunin, was right about this, he is warning us about the danger of allowing a "red" vs. "expert" dichotomy to establish itself. Those who are committed to social change must seek the most secure and general conceptual foundations, and must know all of the bends in the curves.

To put it in a nutshell: we cannot abandon the field of abstraction to the neoclassical hegemon. Paraphrasing von Clausewicz, abstract social theory is too important to be left to the abstract social theorists: the ideological state apparatuses of the capitalist ruling class. In order to be truly "about people," then – and to become useful in the movements for social transformation – economics must also be "about curves." Which curves, and how they turn, is a question for another occasion.

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(1) Information about the Post-Autistic Economics Movement can be found on its website, www.paecon.net. There is a newsletter, which can be accessed by sending email to pae_news@btinternet.com.

(2) Non-economist readers may wonder about the origin of the term "neoclassical" to describe today's economic orthodoxy. This is a complex subject that cannot be adequately explored here, but in essence the term refers to continuity with the "classical" economics of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, but only insofar as the distinguishing feature of the classical tradition is held to be the commitment to "laissez-faire" policies. This ignores other aspects of classical theory its focus on social class and accumulation which connect the classical writers more to Marx than to the present-day versions of the invisible hand. I am indebted to Derek Lovejoy for translating Solow's article back into English.

(3) I deliberately use the singular "model" here, rather than "models," to be provocative! Just as Solow is asserting that there is ultimately only one model, I am claiming that, in the last instance, there is only one alternative model. Institutionalism does not amount to a theoretical alternative, owing to its fundamental commitment against theory. Post-Keynesian or "structural" Keynesian theory attempts to carve out a middle ground, but must eventually settle on one side or the other. This claim should not be taken as intending to undermine the coalitional and pluralist spirit of the post-autistic economics movement.

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CALL FOR PAPERS

THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

In a few years, there will no longer be any surviving veterans of the Spanish Civil War. Before that grim historical landmark arrives, SCIENCE & SOCIETY will publish a special issue on the war (1936-39), which was so significant in shaping subsequent developments in the world conflict with fascism and in the left, both in the USA and worldwide. The issue will be dedicated to the memory of the distinguished historian, Robert G. Colodny (1915-1997), former member of our Board of Contributing Editors and a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion.

We invite papers on diverse aspects of the war – the social and military struggles in Spain itself, class and gender dynamics, the international context, the volunteers from other countries, the strategies and politics of Franco and his fascist allies. We hope that the issue can appear in 2003. The deadline for papers is September 2002.

Please send three copies of submitted papers to The Editor, Science & Society, Room 4331, John Jay College, 445 West 59th Street, New York NY 10019, USA. We would like to hear in advance from those who intend to submit papers, and who have suggestions concerning either possible topics or additional participants.

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CALL FOR PAPERS

MARXIST-FEMINIST THOUGHT TODAY

As capitalism strengthens its worldwide domination, the resulting burdens fall increasingly on women, who make up the majority of the world's working classes, a large proportion of the poorest sectors of the rural and urban populations, and of the growing masses displaced by armed conflicts and natural disasters. Regardless of marital status, income level, or prior occupational experience, women are increasingly in charge of supporting themselves, their families, and future generations. An important cause of the rising pressures on women is the growing number of male workers who find themselves unable to support their families due to plant closings, privatizations and other measures to increase profits. The share of female-headed households has been increasing since the 1970s, especially in areas of the world affected by neoliberal economic policies. While spared from the devastation inflicted on the third world, the developed countries have seen sharp drops in marriage rates. In the United States, households composed of married couples with children are only 24% of all households.

It has become commonplace for progressives to argue that Marx's work cannot help us understand our presumably post-capitalist times. For feminists, the rejection of Marxism builds on the outcome of a 1970s debate over the relation between Marxism and feminism. Although most feminists concluded that Marxism is irrelevant or even menacing to women's well-being, a large minority retained a certain interest in Marxist analysis when they adopted "dual systems" theories (representing women as shackled to both patriarchy and capitalism). And a handful of scholars, male as well as female, have persisted in a commitment to finding ways to make Marxism feminist and feminism Marxist.

Readers of SCIENCE & SOCIETY are not likely, of course, to have given up on Marxism. But they may not be aware of the past decades' extensive Marxist-feminist discussions, much less of current trends in Marxist-feminist thought and analysis. It is time for all of us to reappraise Marx's work, the Marxist heritage, and Marxist-feminist theory in an effort to understand, in all their complexity, the manifold ways in which capitalism affects the lives of women everywhere.

To this end, we call for contributions to a special issue of SCIENCE & SOCIETY on Marxist-Feminist Thought Today." We welcome contributions on all topics, whether dealing with feminist issues concerning the mode of production (at local, regional, national or global levels), related to other elements of the social formation such as culture, ideology, power, the state, class and class struggles, or to social movements and activist practices. Possible topics include: unionization among women workers; the relationship between changes in men's opportunity structures and women's rising levels of labor force participation and economic responsibility; the effects of recent welfare reforms; body talk and its implications; rethinking race, gender, and identity politics; Marxist-feminism, materialist feminism, and other puzzles; Black feminism and Marxist-feminist thought; beyond discourse determinism in the understanding of the feminist subject; etc. In all cases we ask authors to explain how they view their framework to be Marxist as well as feminist. We especially welcome manuscripts and proposals from younger scholars.

The guest editors for the issue are Editorial Board member Lise Vogel (Rider University, 2083 Lawrenceville Road, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648; lvogel@mindspring.com; 718-499-4952) and Martha E. Gimenez (Department of Sociology, Campus Box 327, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder CO 80309; gimenez@csf.colorado.edu). Copies of proposals, abstracts, manuscripts and other correspondence should go to both Vogel and Gimenez. The deadline for manuscripts is September 2002, and the issue is projected for publication in 2003.

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The articles in the present issue consist of a delicious morsel of ethics and the sources of consciousness, sandwiched in between two slices of history.

To begin with the sandwich. The opening study by Neil Davidson, "Marx and Engels on the Scottish Highlands," is a detailed and scholarly excavation that reveals the enduring wealth of Marxiana – its reach into the deepest crevasses of human life and the farthest, most northern climes. Yes, Marx and Engels were conversant with much of the contemporary literature on the history, historiography and culture of Scotland, and their observations are intriguing in and of themselves. But in Davidson's account they are also used as a platform for a new look at timeless issues: the relation of capitalism to progress; to nation formation and national consciousness; the appropriate theoretical toolkit for understanding pre-capitalist social formations; and much more. A portrait emerges of a developing conception that avoids the nether pitfalls of economic determinism, on one side, and a romantic voluntarism, on the other (both positions often wrongly attributed to Marx and Engels, or, more accurately, one pitfall to each). Davidson's study is thus much more than a piece of learned antiquarianism; it resonates with meaning for many areas of the world and many still-current issues of political commitment and social transformation.

The meat of the sandwich (we should beware of pushing this analogy too far) is Robert Lanning's study "Ethics and Self-Mastery: Revolution and the Fully Developed Person in the Work of Georg Lukács." Just as Marx and Engels are continuing sources that can be mined for insight into social transformation and nation formation, so Lukács remains, as Lanning shows, a source of continuing importance for thinking about the relation between social experience and consciousness – the complex mediations through which experience must pass in order to eventuate in fully formed individuals capable of grasping and transforming reality. The concept of self-mastery is a link between the ethical and the revolutionary; it is a theme that connects the early and mature works of Lukács. Lanning's study shows the continuing relevance of Lukács, and transcends all narrow efforts to "capture" this great thinker for one or another present-day political position.

The opposing slice of history completes the sandwich (it is truly over now; I promise) against a different historical backdrop: the United States in the 19th century. Daniel Gaido's study of "The Populist Interpretation of American History: A Materialist Revision" argues that, to understand the difference between the Populist and Marxist traditions in the writing of American History we must not only grasp both strengths and weaknesses in the former, but must also develop an understanding of its social provenance. As the intellectual product of the old middle class of petty proprietors – which loomed quite large in the specificity of capitalism in the USA – the positions of the Progressive historians, of whom Charles A. Beard is the chief exemplar, take shape. In this light, the troublesome category of "agrarian interest," which cut across social class and offered its own unique basis for interpretation of the early Hamilton-Jefferson struggles, the Civil War, and the late-19th-century battles over banking, the gold standard, and much else, can be understood. This sort of critique is necessary precisely so that we can draw upon the many strengths and contributions of the Progressive (populist) school for further deepening our knowledge of U. S. capitalist development.

"Communications" in this issue include a thoughtful retrospective review, by Costas Panayotakis, of the exhibit on "Utopia" sponsored by the New York Public Library and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France of Paris. The exhibit opened in New York in October, 2000, and closed in January, 2001. Panayotakis deftly surveys the exhibit and the literature produced in association with it, revealing both the enormous power of the materials presented and the studied ambivalence of the exhibit's spin doctors, whose pet conclusion is that utopian thought through the ages is charming, like the fantasies of children, but to be outgrown – rather than (say) to be made scientific and practical.

Finally, we note the review article by Jason W. Moore on the important study by Giovanni Arrighi, Beverly J. Silver, and others, on Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System. The book authors write from the world-system perspective, and Moore provides a careful summary, along with judicious criticism. Arrighi et al. undertake to develop the world-system tradition to incorporate human agency (as some of its critics thought it could not do), and to answer the charge of macro-reductionism by invoking insights into stages, states, sectors or "fractions" of capital, etc. It is an attempt that is worthy of note, and Moore's review will help the reader in orienting her/himself in this literature.

D.L.

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