How utterly trivial and boring....

Updated:  28 July 2012

The Grouch reads.... badly...


I have just read the first forty pages of the widely cited and praised book, The Market System, by Charles E. Lindblom. L. Does not exactly resort to the phrase "the dynamism of capitalism"--- but he might have. Allof this human activity, he might have said, how amazing--- how social we are. To be sure, there is a phenomenon there, but please spare me the " ooohs" and "ahhhs"..... An analogy: to speak of all this marvellous activity and be amazed......is much as if one were to watch a dance performance, and come away saying:: oh! So many turns! So many leaps--- and high leaps, too........


After-thoughts; as I've read further...
I'm about half way through this book, and I do find things to value.  However, I continue to be bothered by a certain glib quality in the style.  There are sentences, claims without footnotes or extended explanations.  


Moreover, I have the feeling that the author jumps this way and then that----too often.


I understand that a book of broad scope intended to be widely accessible might inevitably provoke such complaints......But, I am not convinced that in a technical sense Professor Lindlom has found the right solution to this problem.....


I also have a little worry, of a possibly more fundamental nature.
Thinking of the early part of the book, and its description of the allegedly marvelous quality of "the market", I have to say that I am not convinced that any such thing as "the market" exists.
Yes, there really is human activity, social activity, in all of its complexities.    
And, somehow out of that polyphony and cacaphony there emerges the things we value....


Yet to say it's due to the market is to commit oneself to the accuracy of a small set of laws or propositions which are the domain of professional economists.....


And, to do that is tantamount to suggesting the fundamental  laws of human psychology are known.


I doubt that proposition.


At best, what we've got is an enormous element of human striving, and many blind men and women grasping its various parts.......That, I suppose, is where we stand today with a deep understanding of human nature.


To develop this criticism, I would need to focus upon one specific element which shows the reigning orthodoxy to be fundamentally flawed.  I suppose I might start with the understanding of words like "ethics" and "morality" which appear from time to time in Lindblom's book.  (Here he is no innovator, but representative of the contemporary climate.)


And, I would make the following claim:  So long as we think that "ethics" or "morality"or that whole sphere of human existence is a special category, our understanding of ourselves will be flawed.


Can I defend that at further length?  No, not  at any rate here-and-now.  If I were to gesture in the direction of more detail, I would have to appeal to Terry Penner's interpretation of Socrates----itself controversial.


I've done my best to be honest, thereby opening myself to a variety of criticisms.  But, while what I've said is far from a full defense or explanation of anything, it's better than my initial comment.