[From Bill Williams UMCK 1 November 2002 2:00 AM CST]
Bill Powers seems to be under the mistaken impression that I altogether resent
people other than trained economists having something to say about economic
questions. The following letter to Bruce Nevin more than a year ago I think is
an indication to the contrary. While I have a point of disagreement with
Harris-- I think he confused the _idea_ of profit maximization with a phenomena
of business behavior that is commonly captioned "profit maximization", I think
if a person is going to read one book on economics Harris' book would be a good
book to read. I don't have any problem at all with Harris being a linguist
rather than an economist and never-the-less presuming to write about an
economic question "The Transformation of Capitalism."
ยทยทยท
---- Forwarded message ----
From: William Williams <w.d.williams@email.ro>
Date: Tue Aug 14 09:04:33 2001
Bruce,
I've been reading Zellig Harris' _THe Transformation of Capitalist Society_. I
find it a very intresting book. It displays a historical sense that I think
has few rivals. I particularly like the way he draws lessons from the
transformation from a feudal to a capitalist society as a guide as to what to
think about in considering a transition from capitalism to some more suitable
future. I may adopt for my own use his assessment of Marxism. He acknowledges
the positive contributions of the tradition in a way that is fair, but his
thinking takes him in a very different direction than contemporary Marxism. The
lesson as I take it is the previous transition ( it was the development of
technologies and institutions in the cities rather than peasant revolts that
defeated feudalism applies today-- contemporary capitalist society is not
monolithic, there are areas in which new modes of life can be experimented with
and that these experiments rather than confrontations will be the source of a
new society. E. Morrison's _Men Machines and Modern Times_ although very
different in tone expresses some similiar ideas.
As it is, the book is an impressive document. However, it seems to me that
Harris could have done more to express explicitly some of the principle from
which he was reasoning. In my way of reading the book, Harris makes frequent
use of the following principles: 1) The continuity of human experience, 2) the
inter-connectedness or inter-dependence of that experience, 3) a conception of
social or institutional innovation in terms of minimual dislocation, 4) a
conception of the interconnectedness of technology and institutins which is
different than either the passive role assigned by orthodox economics, or the
Marxist historicism. Other than to say his conception og technology appears to
be differnt,I don't have the terminology to describe his conception concisely.
It might be prudent for me to re-read before saying so, but it seems to me that
Harris may have had a misconception about the relationship between capitalism
and profit-maximization. As far as I can tell, what may be his misconception
never results in any mistake or distortion regarding his practical
recomendatins. For me, hoever, the notion that Bill Gates is engaged in an
exercise in profit maximizing conflates a mythical construct and a quite
different reality. In crude terms the ideas about profit maximization belong
to "the stories we tell our children on Sunday morning." There is, however, I
think something very similiar to the idea of profit maximization in the notion
of unlimited expectations. At worst what Harris may have done is to accept an
economic construct as having more coherence than it actually posseses.
If Harris was to some extent mistaken about the construct and role of profit
maximization, it is a mistaken that is correctable. All in all a very profound
book in regard to its historical and practical sense.
While I can't at this point see what I could find in them that I could use, I
suppose it would be prudent to look at his linguistic texts.
Bill Williams
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