转一个我在牛剑论坛上发表的帖子 [推广有奖]

这是我回答中国经济研究中心一个朋友的信，对方主要问了马克思主义经济学的前景和研究范式，我又补充谈了一些对于未来经济学的预测以及对前几年经济学改革运动的看法，欢迎大家给出不同的见解和评价
For some of your questions, I think that Marxism Economics should be classified to another FIELD of economics other than Neo-classical economics or so called orthodox economics. For the first reason, we can easily find that Neo-classical economics, or other types of economics which are popular in recent years, they still mainly concern about the market power and tries its best to solve the problems of it, or analysis it via more than one facet, such as Public Choice School. Thus as I see it, the " hard core " of this kind of economics remains to be " supply and demand", though we may see a lot of disputes among different schools. For instance, Neo/New Institutional Economics, they just imply the supply-demand analysis into the field of institution, so I consider it as one division of Neo-economics.

Whereas in contrast, Karl Marx Economics analysis a completely different field, or part, that is the produce process, and it tries to discribe what happened in the process. Marx thinks that it should not be considered as a "black box" which you input labour and other factors such as capital and then the products can be made. In his "Das Capital" Volumn 1 and 2, he uses the majority paragraphs to depict the whole process from the side of both capitalists and employees in a very logical way, and then in other parts as well as the Volumn 3, he finally concludes the source of development of capitalism, and then anticipates what will happen later than his years according to the mechalism of capitalism he analysis.

I do not think that Karl Mark is one of the representatives of so called Woking People. But usually we combine them, why? From my point of view, that should be ascribed to his thoughts met the need of Working Momentems in the 1840-50s,in which the conflicts between employees and capitalists finally become so intensive that cannot be solved without violence. He carefully did a good job to analysis the whole Capital Society in his time ( Basically in UK and European countries), and then his ideas are quite suitable for the woking people. However, for my this point, I am still not so sure, because he wrote " Declaration of Communism" at first and then his "Das Capital", and later he also tried to make a deep thought from the expierence of Commun of Paris.

As far as I am concerned, two serious points are the main short-commings of Karl Marx Economics and that is why it has to strive nowadays even in a Communism Country such as China. The first, as I alluded in the paragraph above, it is too closely connected with ideology and politics. It completely supports the working movement, which is the top most forbidden issue in Capitalism countries, thus it cannot be well established in the western world. Though there are some scholars in UK/USA or leading countries doing research in Marx Economics, they just concentrate on the research of the process of producing, never talk too much about ideology and the future of capitalism. And I can say that sometimes a few non-popular schools (mainly concern on Sectional economics or have new angles, such as Innovation School and Stages of Economic development), frequently refer to Marx Economics with positive attitude. You may image that: if you a a patient in a hospital and try to seek for health service, but the doctor tells you that you will die finally ( even estimates when will you pass away), and the reason to pass away, how to lose your life, and what disease will kill you. In that case, do you like that doctor, even he may tell you the truth?

And for the second, since it tries to predict what will happen after his time, Marx Economics has a lot of drawbacks. A lot of people, especially in China, usually just use one or two of its conclusions and try to see whether they are true in China nowadays. Of course they cannot fully explain all the new aspects of China, but since we Chinese institutions have to insist on its fundermental role in economics, we have the serious problem. For one side, we need to keep in steps with the development of economy and relative means of resources allocation, and we should use some good ideas or facets from so called western economics, which do better in promoting our economy directly and can show us in a more clear way. However, on the other side, we must insist the role of Marx economics, and then almost every economic book in China asserts that it based on Marx Economics and just use western economics as supplements. Really?? We can see it obviously that even in so called political economics, the market is considered as an aggregation of contract, and property rights are so widely used instead of ownership. In this case, I do not know whether it is still Marx Economics, but I can say with confidence that this kind of phenomena will defame Marx Economics.

Though I seem to be very sad of Karl Marx Economics, I do not say it will finally diminish or disappear. You know a lot of non-popular schools, though they have not been widely accepted by Official Economics, they still exist. So I guess that is the near future of Marx economics. But how economics will develop in the future, and which kind of economics will get the Mainstream role in the future? I am not sure about it. Maybe I can call this stage as Complicated复杂, or HUNDUN混沌, that what have I mentioned in my essay titled Dynamics of Scientfic Evolution. In the year 2000, in the Univ of Cam, there were 27 Economic PhD students signed a consensus in support of reform in economics teaching for this kind of reason and they also tried to get more information of Marx Economics, but I do not know the final result. In USA, the NO.10 course of Department of Economics in Harvard Univ has been remained, thus the majority of reformers believe it is a failure.