[ From Bill Williams UMKC 28 September 2001 10:00 CST ]
In my previous "Economic Reference" I conflated two trains of thought.
Henry's article does an outstanding job of expounding the basic structure of
orthodox economic analysis. He does so as a preliminary for his critique.
What is so exceptional about the article is its combination of accuracy,
comprehensiveness and freedom jargon or technical nominclature. Ordinarily
I'm not enthusiastic about the work of Marxist economists, but Henry's
article it seems to me may allow a reader to avoid a lengthy trudge
through less well concieved presentations.
However, Henry doesn't take the story he tells all the way up to the
present. Henry's account leaves out the recent work in macro-economics
that uses control theory. What seems to be happening is that the old
orthodox formulation doesn't appear completely plausible-- even to
orthodox economists. So they've added control theory to create an
eclectic hybrid that has the combined characteristics that satisfy
their preconceptions as to what is needed in theoretical economics.
From_my standpoint this may be a hopeful development. Eventually
discontent can be expected to develop as the inadaquacies of the
hybrid formulation are identified. Then, perhaps it will be a
comparatively easy step to propose that because the control theory
portion of the theory is working, why not expand the application of
control theory so that it does the whole job.
Sorry to have confused matters by getting Henry's stuff and the partial
control theory application mixed up.
Best
Bill Williams
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