Economics, Science and Capitalism

207 Pages·2021·9.528 MB·English

by  Richard Westra

Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy
ECONOMICS, SCIENCE
AND CAPITALISM
Richard Westra
Economics, Science and Capitalism
Various strains of heterodox economics have sought, and largely failed, to dismount
orthodoxy from its dominant position. This book critiques the criticizers, explaining
why heterodox economics challenges have faltered, and then presents a coherent
alternative paradigm of its own. This simultaneously exposes the vacuousness of
neoclassical economics, the limitations of heterodox critique and the subverting of
Karl Marx’s revolutionary economic thought by his own disciples.
The book draws in particular on two key intellectual traditions in making its
arguments: critical realism and Marxism. From the refounding of critical realist
philosophy of science in the hands of Roy Bhaskar, emphasis is placed upon
the position that the ontological nature of the object of study determines the
form of its possible science. However, in their theoretical constructions, neither
orthodox economics nor heterodox economics problematizes the unique ontology
of capitalism to the detriment of knowledge about the social world. The book
maintains that a century of misthinking over Marx’s corpus has resulted in a
missed opportunity to construct a paradigmatic alternative to orthodox economics.
Drawing upon the tradition of the Japanese Uno approach to Marxism, and
supported by Bhaskar’s development of critical realism as underlaborer for science,
the book defends Marx’s writing in his monumental Capital as founding an
economic science adequate to its ontological object of study. It then elaborates
upon how Marxian economic theory exposes the hidden scourges of capitalism
and what is required to unleash the potential of this theory for comprehensive
analysis of capitalist vicissitudes, the study of economic life in precapitalist societies
and the design of a desperately needed postcapitalist social order.
Broadening its appeal as it sets out to reclaim Marx’s revolutionary legacy,
this original volume critically traverses writings in mainstream and heterodox
economics, cutting edge philosophy of science and Marxian political economy
and introduces readers to a reconstruction of Marx’s Capital engineered in Japan.
This provocative book is essential reading for everyone interested in heterodox
economics, critical realism, Marxian economics and critiques of capitalism.
Richard Westra is University Professor at the Institute of Political Science,
University of Opole and Research Coordinator at the Science and Technology
Park, Opole, Poland. He has previously taught at universities in Japan, South
Korea, Thailand, Canada and The Bahamas and is international Adjunct
Professor of the Center for Macau Studies, University of Macau.
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For more information about this series, please visit: www. routledge .com /
Routledge- Frontiers- of -Political -Economy /book -series /SE0345
Economics, Science and
Capitalism
Richard Westra
First published 2022
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© 2022 Richard Westra
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Westra, Richard, 1954- author.
Title: Economics, science and capitalism / Richard Westra.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. |
Series: Routledge frontiers of political economy | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021036462 (print) | LCCN 2021036463 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367610425 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367610432 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003103028 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Economics. | Science. | Capitalism.
Classification: LCC HB71 .W456 2022 (print) | LCC HB71 (ebook) |
DDC 330.1--dc23
LC record available at https://lccnloc.gov/2021036462
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021036463
ISBN: 978-0-367-61042-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-61043-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-10302-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003103028
Typeset in Bembo
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
List of illustrations vi
Acknowledgments vii
1 Introduction: Economics and “the economy” 1
2 How economics forgot capitalism 16
3 Economics caught in a physics masquerade 35
4 Rethinking science and social science with critical realism 56
5 Rethinking Marx and the economic science of Capital 74
6 The Uno–Sekine reconstruction of Capital: Microeconomics
of value, macroeconomics of crises 95
7 Levels of analysis in Marxian political economy 127
8 Marxists and Marx’s unfinished project in Capital 146
9 Conclusion: Capital, science and political economy in the
narrow and comprehensive sense 173
References 189
Index 194
Illustrations
Figures
3.1 Bringing the world into order. (Source: author.) 40
3.2 Neoclassical economics desperately seeking physics.
(Source: author.) 52
4.1 From positivism to postmodernism. (Source: author.) 59
4.2 Key principles Bhaskar’s critical realism contributes to
philosophy of science. (Source: author.) 65
5.1 Kautsky, Lukács, Althusser and Marxism qua HM.
(Source: author.) 84
7.1 Stage theory as a level of analysis in Marxian political
economy. (Source: author.) 139
7.2 Empirical-historical analysis of capitalism. (Source: author.) 144
9.1 Mediation of the superstructure is the basis for integrating
other social sciences into the study of capitalism.
(Source: author.) 181
9.2 Marxian political economy in the narrow and comprehensive
sense. (Source: author.) 186
Tables
6.1 The Marx-Hegel correspondence 99
6.2 Brief outline of the dialectic of capital 122
Acknowledgments
This book is indebted to my intellectual comradeship with Robert Albritton
and Thomas Sekine, their keen insights and intellectual generosity in com-
municating them. A large debt of gratitude is owed to my wife and life partner
Wanida Westra who supported me in more ways than can be described in this
acknowledgment as I wrote this book while we endured three stay-at-home,
lock-down orders during the epidemiological emergency which besieged
the world through 2020–2021 and probably is not done yet. I appreciate the
opportunity of reduced teaching and the support and encouragement of the
Institute for Political Science at University of Opole which has been my aca-
demic home since October 2019.
Also to be acknowledged is that portions of my paper first published in the
Review of Radical Political Economics as “Roy Bhaskar’s Critical Realism and the
Social Science of Marxian Economics” doi: 10.1177/0486613418787405 Fall
2019, 51 (3): 365–382 appear here with permission of the Union for Radical
Political Economics. Portions in revised form of my article first published in
the Journal of Australian Political Economy as “Capital as Dialectical Economic
Theory”, Summer 2012/13, 70: 233–50 appear in Chapter 6 with permission
of the journal.

1 Introduction
Economics and “the economy”
Critiques of what is variously referred to as neoclassical, orthodox or main-
stream economics abound. In this book we will encounter many if not most
of them. They emanate from a diverse, “pluralistic” collection of economists
self-identifying as heterodox or Marxian; though where the latter have often
abdicated the very question of “economics” as a discipline to take refuge in
what they understand as “political economy”. There is no consensus over what
precisely constitutes heterodox economics beyond its oppositions to elements
of orthodoxy. Nor is there an agreed upon heterodox economist membership
roster (Hodgson 2019). These issues, however, are not the main concern of
this book. Rather what unfolds across its pages is a more devastating challenge
to the neoclassical enterprise than has been mustered heretofore by heterodox
economics or Marxists.
What is novel in this challenge is firstly its demonstrating the poverty of
neoclassical theory not only through direct thrashing of basic neoclassical pos-
tulates and puncturing of defenses neoclassicals rely on to immunize these from
attacks, but in simultaneously exposing limitations of existing heterodox eco-
nomics critiques of orthodoxy. For example, common refrains emanating from
the heterodox literature and even from within the orthodox fold over neoclas-
sical economics’ paucity of “realisticness” or ahistorical bent are certainly true.
However, as these are posed, they inadvertently buy into the mainstream fram-
ing of the disciplinary discussion. Thus more profound questions of economic
thought that arise in conceiving a genuine alternative worthy of the appellation
economic theory are obfuscated. Secondly, heterodox economics critique of
the scientific pretentions of neoclassical economics, particularly in its initial
positivist mode, expose the shaky ground mainstream theory is built upon.
Yet, in seeking to rethink scientificity in terms of general workings of the social
world or aporias of human history, these pass over vexing questions of the very
intelligibility and historicity of economic thought in the first place, or, related
to the foregoing, what the ramifications are for theory construction of that
problematic. Thirdly, no variant of heterodox economics provides a genuine
alternative economic theory to neoclassical economics. This book not only
explains why Marx’s three-volume Capital contains the rudiments of one and
what its essential contours are, but a reconstruction and refinement of Marx’s
DOI: 10.4324/9781003103028-1