In Economics Departments, Marx's Days Are Like Grass, Like A Flower Of The Field He Bloomed

Russell Jacoby asks, in the 25 July 2008 issues of The Chronicle of Higher Education, "How is it that Freud is not taught in psychology departments, Marx is not taught in economics, and Hegel is hardly taught in philosophy?"

I occasionally point out treatments of Marx using the techniques of modern mathematical economics. Lots of work has been done in this vein. I might as well mention analytical Marxism, as developed by, for example, John Roemer; Morishima's 1970s work drawing on Johnny Von Neumann; and, of course, Sraffians, such as John Eatwell or Ian Steedman. In regard to the latter, some economists have disputed Steedman's interpretation of Marx's work. I here have in mind Dumenil, Lipietz, and Foley's "New interpretation" and the Temporal Single System approach associated with such economists as Alan Freeman and Andrew Kliman. Perhaps Jacoby is aware that if economists chose to teach Marx, they have much work to draw on. After all, Jacoby notes that Wassily Leontief taught a 1936 seminar on Marx at Harvard. Duncan Foley's testimony (I believe in Colander, Holt and Rosser (204)) is just one demonstration that the ignorance of Marx among orthodox economists cannot be justified on normal scholarly or scientific norms.

I don't expect vulgar political economic monopolists to even acknowledge the existence of their suppressed competition. Orthodox economists just refuse to reference lots of literature, for example, in heterodox journals.

Reminder to myself: Read Andras Bródy's Proportions, Prices, and Planning: A Mathematical Restatement of the Labor Theory of Value (Akadémiai Kiadó, 1970) for an early analytical examination of Marx. Read Victor S. Venida's "Marxian Categories Empirically Estimated: The Philippines, 1961-1994" (Review of Radical Political Economics, V. 39, N. 1 (2007): 58-579) for recent econometric work.