The Irrelevance of Economics

A quote from Robert Paul Wolff, (Cut and pasted from his blog, "The Philosopher's Stone"---NOT :"The Philosopher's stoned"........)

"I am reminded of a famous remark made in 1957 by Paul Samuelson, the first person ever to win   the newly established Nobel prize in Economics, and widely considered the greatest living economist. Samuelson observed that in a General Equilibrium system with perfect competition, it does not matter whether capital hires labor or labor hires capital. He was quite correct about his model, as we would expect him to be, and generally speaking, folks who heard or read this remark took it as evidence of the irrelevance to economic theory of any moral condemnations of exploitation or of the tyranny of capital over labor.

But I read the remark quite differently. That capital hires labor is the simplest, most obvious, most universal, most indubitable fact about capitalism. Any model that purports to reveal the structure of capitalism and yet fails to capture that elementary fact is obviously completely inadequate! One might as well offer a model of American politics that has no place in it for the fact that periodically Americans hold elections."

(color not in original)

http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot