Inasmuch as the Good Book tells us “So the last shall be
first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen” [Matthew 20:16], we ought to celebrate
Paul Krugman’s recognition today of the fact that the deliberate destruction of
labor unions is a significant cause of income inequity in the United States.
To be sure, Krugman did write, on the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, that “By my
reckoning, Karl Marx made about as much contribution to economics as Zeppo Marx
made to comedy.”
Let us grant that Paul Krugman has a good heart. It is his brain that fails him.
15 comments:
"Sure, Marx wrote about economic upheavals; so did lots of people. What he never managed to do was offer either a comprehensible explanation of why such upheavals happen, or any suggestions about what to do about them (except abolish capitalism). By my reckoning, Karl Marx made about as much contribution to economics as Zeppo Marx made to comedy."
It's clear this 60+ year old, ivy league, public intellectual, who teaches at CUNY, never actually bothered to read 1 page of Capital. Therefore, why would we grant that he has a good heart? People that talk on subjects as experts, yet have never actually investigated the subject they're speaking on, usually DON'T have good hearts...
EDIT: They have hubris, not humility.
Chris, it is hard to look into the heart of someone whom you know only from his writings. His brain, on the other hand, is on full display. If I were to discover that Paul Krugman is kind to widows, orphans, and cats, it would not alter my judgment of him.
When I saw your (RPW) comment about Paul Krugman's brain, I was going to criticize it, but I sensed it was another example of your irony and I desisted. However, from what you say to Chris, it seems that you really believe that Krugman's intelligence is limited. The guy won a Nobel Prize in Economics and writes a quite articulate column for the New York Times twice a week. There is no problem with Krugman's intelligence; he simply has another political position than you and I do. He is anti-Marxist and we aren't. It is always a serious political mistake to underestimate the intelligence of your opponents.
Eons ago I was researching a paper for a class in historiography. I was struck by how mainstream, liberal historians consistently looked at both Marx and Freud as, in one way or another, outside the great traditions of Western civilization. I assume Krugman picked up the general assessment of Marx as not worth the time and effort to study (minor post-Ricardian, autodidact, etc.) and was never challenged to re-think a position he acquired through osmosis.
It is, of course, a lot easier to have a successful academic career when one plays in the mainstream ballpark, Krugman playing in center field for the Keynesian team. And, it is always a lot easier to simply define away challenges to ones belief system than to take up the challenge and seriously engage in an intellectually honest effort to understand the challenge.
Personally, when he strays into political analysis is when I roll my eyes, groan, and mutter things like "What a maroon!"
Christopher Mulvaney,
I agree with what you say, and most people, including probably Krugman, want to be on the side of the winners, where the money and social status is and are more than willing to "not see" the point of view of life's losers, when their own career interests are concerned. That doesn't make them stupid, only "normally" self-interested.
It's perverse weirdos like us who need our heads examined because we don't gravitate to the winning side.
Wallerstein,
This is perhaps one of the few instances where I must disagree with you. He did win a nobel prize in economics but so did Milton Friedman, and if you've ever read his books, they're...well daft and myopic would be charitable descriptors.
I was claiming that it's not at all clear to me that Krugman is a *good* man, since he exercises flagrant hubris not humility, not that he isn't intelligent. However, I actually don't find 99% of the NYTimes op-eds to be even vaguely insightful, coherent, well thought out, deep, reflective, etc (Thomas Friedman, Ross Doughthart (SP), and David Brooks are buffoons!). Most of them, I suspect, are shallow throw away pieces, written in 20 minutes while drinking a morning cup of coffee. You know your Chomsky as well as I do. You know how concision works. It's near structurally impossible to say something profound in an op-ed that will be published by the times.
In a society where no one has a prolonged attention span, and celebrity triumphs over intellect, and one-dimensional thought dominates over historical reflection, those that rise to the top, as our public intellectuals, may well not be intellectuals at all! I could name names but the list would be staggering. I can't help myself, so just one: Sam Harris.
P.S. Professor Wolff and others may want to watch this:
https://iai.tv/video/rethinking-capital
It's a discussion about capitalism with Krugman and a classical marxist-leninist Alex Callinicos (head of Britains SWP, and professor at King's college London). Krugman 1) admits he doesn't actually know what 'capitalism' is. Seriously. 2) Seems flummoxed by the notion that capital is a social relation and not a thing, law, principle, or whatever.
Chris,
Chomsky is a genius. If we compare people to Chomsky, no one is going to match his level of intelligence except Wittgenstein, Russell, Nietzsche, Marx, etc.
None of the New York Times op-ed writers impress me much and in fact, I haven't read the NY Times for almost 3 years now. I stopped reading it for mental health reasons.
Thanks for the link. I'll look at it later.
Ha, I also stopped a while ago. Chomsky is a genius yes, but you know as well as I do, besides his encyclopedic memory, his genius is almost largely relegated to linguistics. His political commentary, while often correct, is actually transparently simple. I don't think the general public struggles to understand his political points. So we don't have to say genius in politics must be tantamount to Chomsky's genius in linguistics (which the general public would and should find confusing - 'merge' is infuriatingly difficult for me to wrestle with).
So I'm not sure why Krugman should be considered 'good' or as having profound intelligence. I'm not saying he doesn't have profound intelligence, but op-eds and economic prizes don't instantly ring out as evidence for that claim. I've never read any of his books either, which may bolster your case.
Besides his encyclopedic memory, Chomsky's incredible intelligence can be seen in his debates (available in YouTube) with Buckley and Dershowitz: his mind works at incredible speed to organize his answers and to win debating points. His mind is a deadly weapon.
I never said that Krugman's intelligence is profound. Who is profound anyway besides the great thinkers like Marx and Nietzsche?
Krugman has a high IQ, high enough to master the game of academic economics. Yes, I know that there are other kinds of intelligence, notably emotional intelligence. It doesn't matter whether academic economics is an accurate reflection of reality or not. Think of it as a game. Krugman plays the game well enough to be rewarded the Nobel Prize. I'd say that anyone who masters the game of economics is intelligent just as anyone who masters the game of chess is.
Although others seem to have had similar points of view, I would like to reinforce the point.
As I see things, the problem with Paul Krugman is that he crafts his opinions about a topic (in this case Marx's merits or lack thereof) to fit his preferred political conclusions. He does not attempt to give the topic a fair consideration independently of his utility as political cudgel (to use another commentator's term), he just "knows" that something is wrong because he feels it that way deep in his guts, so to speak.
To take full advantage of the bully pulpit his prominence affords him he frequently misrepresents his competence, to put this differently.
Or, more succinctly, he often acts as an agenda-pusher.
Anyone acting that way sounds silly. I would be surprised if they were not at least somewhat aware of that. That is the price they are ready to pay to be "influencers", or "opinion-makers".
He is not the only one, to be sure. This example, courtesy of Larry Summers, another reputably extremely clever and prominent economist, quite close to Krugman's position, is particularly clear:
https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2019/03/05/summers%E2%80%8B-shameless-assault-on-mmt/
Here might be a good place to note that the Nobel Prize in Economics is a (no doubt intentionally) misleading name for the prize.
"Besides his encyclopedic memory, Chomsky's incredible intelligence can be seen in his debates (available in YouTube) with Buckley and Dershowitz: his mind works at incredible speed to organize his answers and to win debating points. His mind is a deadly weapon"
Right, but he wins those debates because of his memory, not because of some deep Marxian, Foucauldian, Critical Theoretical, or pick your preferred abstract lefty theory you like. In the Buckley debate he constantly cites, encyclopedically, empirical facts which contradict Buckley's claims about the ideals of the aggressor. It's the same with the Dershowitz debate. I'm not denying that Chomsky is both a genius and unprecedented in terms of human talents - I love the man to death, I grew up on his books - but his *political* commentary, at bottom, is hardly *deep*. All of the *political* books I've read by him, while extremely informative in terms of historical facts, will not find a place alongside Plato, Marx, Rousseau, Hegel, or Adorno, in the future. Hell, I'm not even sure they'll find a place alongside Lenin.
Chris,
Chomsky wins debates not only because of his memory, but also because of an incredible ability to rapidly organize the facts that he stores in his memory. His stuff on Manufacturing Consent is decent political theory, not just information about historical facts. Yes, it would have been interesting if a person of Chomsky's intellect and political commitment had read more Marx and Adorno, etc.
Chomsky is not, I agree, a deep political thinker, but not every genius is a deep thinker. I'm not sure whether every deep thinker is a genius, probably so if you exclude the countless pseudo-deep thinkers.
Back to Krugman. Let's say that at age 18 when I dedicated myself to criticizing and subverting the system and the establishment, Krugman decided to get a lucrative, high-status and pleasant job within the system. He was good with numbers, so he studied economics, didn't make waves, never challenged the system, smiled at those whom it paid to smile at, and ended up with tenure at Princeton University, a Nobel Prize in economics and a biweekly column in the New York Times, probably the most prestigious daily newspaper in the U.S. I don't see anything stupid about that. It witnesses "normal" opportunism and an able use of what Brian Leiter calls "capitalist instrumental reasoning".
Most people think like that, although they are less skillful in using the system to their advantage than Krugman is. I find it hard to get indignant about that: I know too many people like Krugman.
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