I didn’t, but reproduction of the economic system is still necessary for human action.
So is breathing. So what? That isn’t what makes it an axiom.
Well, that means action is no more fundamental than reproduction of the economic system. How do you choose between those axioms?
My bad, maybe it’s because I’m getting married. Anyway it succumbs to the regression problem so obviously a wrong axiom.
Now as Hulsmann points out you do need natural resources (goods) to actually act but again that’s temporal priority rather than logical priority. However this is as it were an initial, unproduced, well when time began anyway, endowment not something that had been continually reproduced.
The ball is squarely back in xyz’s court.
The one is an axiom, the other isn’t. What is there to choose between?
It might be helpful for people here to have actually read the book in question or have some understanding of what reproduction means in the classical/Marxian/Sraffian framework (the book was written in the late 70s, during a Sraffian revival, so I am assuming it was influenced by him).
For example, in most of the interpretations of this framework, the “economic” systems under examination are not the same as those in neoclassical economics. If I understand him correctly, Giles seems to be right on target here; the two systems, and possibly even the two ways of thinking about economies, are incommensurable.
Of course, this is disputable to a large extent, since there are so many interpretations of Ricardo and Sraffa. However, Alessandro Roncaglia’s examination of the Sraffian system sheds the most light on this incommensurability, for those interested. He makes the point that Sraffian/Ricardian prices are not really prices in the modern sense of the word, rather, they are the natural prices of Smith’s work. Furthermore, he has a compelling interpretation of the concept of “gravitation,” which makes this difference very clear.
Um, Giles said they’re both built on an axiom. He’s yet to demonstrate why reproduction counts as such. You claim they’re incommensurable by dint of using different definitions and concepts, as if this alone would suffice to make them ‘incommensurable’ (actually you would only need to analyse them down to their base concepts so this is not even true.) Nell is not even trying to use reproduction in a way analogous to how Mises used the action axiom to begin with. By the way, I’ve read the book.
Ziragt,
I’ve read it too but a long time ago so my memory is rusty. Jon has pointed out that xyz fails to argue why reproduction is axiomatic; further he also hasn’t demonstrated why it doesn’t fall prey to the regression fallacy as a concept.
Reproduction is hypothesized for the obvious reason that if a static system cannot at least reproduce itself, then it will no longer exist. Since we are only examining systems that “exist,” we should then only look at systems that are capable of self-replacement.
Perhaps I’m using the term incommensurable loosely, but I simply mean that the purpose of classical economics is different. Accordingly, this leads to a massive difference in methodology. Unless you can say that one purpose is better than another, one cannot really compare the two. I’ll quote a question that gets at some of the difference in focus from the book I’m currently reading on this: “What determines the composition of the product that appears as given in the system?” (Schefold 39)
Reproduction is an action taking by a human(s).
zirgat, I don’t know what you’re attempting to say. But being able to say if it is incommensurable or not takes human action. Different methodologies are still of humans acting, but some are not as logical in their deductions from this axiom as others are.
Also to be able to state if something is incommensurable, a comparison is made, then to be able to make the comparison an overarching reason, a thought even to state: it is incommensurable - such a reason is prior to either side in the comparison to be able to compare the two in the first place. A thought being a theory to make such a distinction is of a human acting.
That’s the point: classical economics is not really concerned with humans acting in the full sense of the term. I’ve been looking for quotes that better explain this. Here’s one from another book by Roncaglia:
“Thus exchange relations are called ‘natural’ when they express the conditions of reproduction in the circular process of production and consumption, or in other words when each economic subject recovers what is needed to repeat activities in the following period…”
This is what classical economics studies. Is this somehow inferior to the pure logic of choice? Maybe, but that seems to be a value judgment.
Yes. It is the point. Because classical economists act and they are human and all their theories, whether they know it or not, derive from human action. But to not know this - is - one of the problems. To also start a theory from a material and neglect to mention or intellectually apprehend the humans acting in the market is a mistake, too. Another point, third I believe, is a material thing doesn’t mean anything whatsoever without human concepts.
Didn’t see this before.
A value judgment is human action.
Ok. And? You can’t get everywhere with the logic of choice.
I agree. That’s the point of subjectivism.
I’d rather maintain that we are talking about human action.
ok. I guess you see the difference now. There are no two axioms being incommensurable. One is an axiom: human action. Reproduction isn’t an axiom.
You mean the one actually is a form of economics, i.e. study of exchanges as a subset of action, whereas the other has a fetish with “self-replacement”?
Well, that’s one, closed-minded way of putting it.
Science isn’t closed-minded. Actually, it’s a thoughtful method.