Saturday, February 05, 2011

Elsewhere

  • Russell Jacoby pans Erik Olin Wright's book Envisioning Real Utopias. I don't know much about Jacoby. I find his review encourages me not to read Wright. It would help, however, if Jacoby didn't cite Wright's use of the word "interstitial" as an example of boring cant, while praising Veblen, who also used the word.
  • Victoria Chick and Ann Pettifor write about the 75th anniversary, on February 3 of Keynes' General Theory.
  • Eric Schliesser, a philosopher, notes Greg Mankiw's refusal to acknowledge the existence of literature on his points, a topic I've mentioned before.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"I don't know much about Jacoby. I find his review encourages me not to read Wright. "

Really? His critique doesn't seem to go much further than "Wright uses big words", a problem that seems to reside in the reader, not the author. I recall Roemer got a similar treatment from the left.

Ian Wright said...

Jacoby review goes much further than that. He says that Wright is incoherent, inconsistent and lacks a methodology. It's a real kicking. But who knows? I haven't read the book.

I have read Wright's 80's essays on value theory, however. They are not good.

-Ian.