A widespread belief seems to be emerging, at least in the popular press, that the U.S. economy is in the throes of a fundamental transformation, one which is wiping out the 1972–95 productivity slowdown, along with inflation, the budget deficit, and the business cycle. A typical recent comment, in a Wall Street Journal article, claimed that “when it comes to technology, even the most bearish analysts agree the microchip and Internet are changing almost everything in the economy” (Ip, 2000). Or as an article in Fortune ( June 8, 1998, pp. 86–87) magazine put it, “The [computer] chip has transformed us at least as pervasively as the internal combustion engine or electric motor.” Alan Greenspan (1999) appears to be among the technological enthusiasts. He recently stated: “A perceptible quickening in the pace at which technological innovations are applied argues for the hypothesis that the recent acceleration in labor productivity is not just a cyclical phenomenon or a statistical aberration, but reflects, at least in part, a more deep-seated, still developing, shift in our economic landscape.” The true enthusiasts treat the New Economy as a fundamental industrial revolution as great or greater in importance than the concurrence of inventions, particularly electricity and the internal combustion engine, which transformed the world at the turn of the last century. There is no dispute that the U.S. economy is awash in computer investment, that productivity has revived, and that the late 1990s were extremely good years for the U.S. economy. Indeed, Robert M. Solow has now declared obsolete his 1987 paradox that “we can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics” (Uchitelle, 2000). However, room remains for a degree of skepticism.

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Productivity Growth, Inflation, and Unemployment: Does the “New Economy” Measure Up to the Great Inventions of the Past?

Philosophy and economics

Capitalism as we know it presents typical dialectical features that isolate it from nature, in which real oppositions make evolution revolutionary: A dialectical metaphysics replaces the free flow of events allowing capitalist relationships but preventing the practice of materialism. Some radically sceptical issues in Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and A Treatise of Human Nature come useful here. A materialistic approach with complete (i.e., non-dialectical) ruptures in fact dovetails with Hume's argument on the unpredictability of nature and the predictability of human social activities. As a consequence, a thus renewed materialistic political economy concerned with the concrete must work out its own categories dynamically, to discard them once they have been proved metaphysical.Keywords: methodology, dialectics, MarxismIntroduction [1]The present paper deals with questions concerning the use of materialism in understanding, and intervening upon, capitalism in the spirit of Marx's Thesis XI on Feuerbach (Marx 1985, p.123). In particular, the dynamic use of the categories of materialistic, though not necessarily Marxist political economy will be considered. First of all, the salient features of the relevant theoretical work in the field will be recalled, to then move on to discuss some aspects of Hume and the importance of his Epicurean (and perhaps Stoic, but this is less momentous for us here) Skepticism for a materialism that can change reality rather than merely interpret it.The goal of the present discussion is to contribute towards a 'dynamic' approach to the identification and use of the economic - and, given the multidisciplinary character of materialistic political economy - social, political and anthropological variables that are needed to represent and change reality. It shall be argued that in 'capitalism as we know it'[2] such variables are understood in theory, and used in practice, as metaphysical concepts deriving from the dominant culture and as simulacra of the material items themselves. If Hume's scepticism is correct, it shall be shown that what was just said implies that the participants to, and students of, the economy do not know, nor indeed can they know, whether they are ever able to directly grasp the actual material: the concrete. This paradox is the central concern of the present paper, for its methodological consequences on political economy.The connection between the economic setup with its social, institutional and cultural features and the means whereby we represent reality in political economy prevents capitalist individuals from ever proving that they have at last gained a hold of the material. Here lie the paradoxical features of the materialistic 'dynamism' in political economy proposed in the present paper: concepts, categories and connections can only be identified to be then discarded once their metaphysical nature of intellectual contrivances, i.e., of simulacra of actual material items consonant with the dominant culture, has been worked out. A la Hume of the Treatise of Human Nature (1739, p.262), liberty (from capitalism and its culture, in our case) can be equated with letting reality develop on its own.In what follows, it shall be argued that the continuous activity of detached theoretical creation and destruction proposed here is emancipative. It allows the creation of what Marx called, in the German Ideology (1846, p. 54-60), the extraneous standardsthat are necessary to view history from outside, in order to be able to both interpret and change it. The materialistic process proposed in what follows can be called a revolution. It aims to pose individuals outside the dominant economic setup by operating outside its cultural and intellectual schemes. By keeping individuals aloof from any socially enforced economic and cultural framework, it guarantees independence of judgement and capacity never to adapt. …

Unusual Humean Issues in Materialistic Political Economy

Economic theory in the light of Schumpeter's scientific heritage

To the purposes of the present exercise,1 moderatism is that kind of thinking that bases itself on a ‘moderate’ vision and method (little things in small steps), and in the name of a self-righteous...

The Perfidy of Moderatism

The problem of uncertainty, ignorance and risk is a rather general one in market economies, and it is closely bound to the very market utopia that is at the origin of dominant economics itself. In other words, the question of uncertainty and the entailed questions of ignorance and risk are powerfully linked to the historical and empirical puzzle of the degree of perfection of our ‘market’ economies: these last exist in spite of the market system not being reality yet. Uncertainty, ignorance and risk must also be conjugated with the question of crises/depressions. Whether we believe these last to be the reminders of the imperfection of present-day capitalism, the cause of capitalism’s doomsday, or just capitalist normality, we cannot help conceding a powerful role to uncertainty and ignorance. A complication is constituted by the fact that economic theory is widely regarded by its practitioners as an abstract subject. We should therefore ask whether a completely abstract (in the economistic sense) treatment is sufficient to produce theories that must account for a reality that is far from perfect. As already said, Western countries are far from being market economies in the sense postulated by (abstract) economic theory, and yet empirical and historical treatments powerfully depend on the theory itself. But on top of this basic limitation theory presents a very distinct set of problems of its own. We are led, inevitably, back to Keynes, Schumpeter and more, in general, to ‘multidisciplinary’, as they rather narrow-mindedly put it in our days of over-specialized economic studies, accounts of the economy and of its functioning. I shall confine myself here, as a starting point for a discussion that cannot be resolved here, to looking at how the question of uncertainty highlights important limitations of economic theorization. This determines on the one hand the need to

Andrea Micocci

Papers

Uncertainty in Market Economies

The Perfidy of Moderatism