The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Stephen Marglin's The Dismal Science is a beautifully written and powerfully argued book that shows how the ideology of economics has justified and supported the trend towards selfishness and hyper-individualism in advanced societies.
--Bianca Jagger (20080324)

In this timely and eloquent critique of the conventional economist's "ideology of knowledge," Stephen Marglin pinpoints a huge blind spot at the heart of this powerful discipline. They can't see community. It's not that the people of the earth are, for the economist, bereft of community. It's that he imagines them as interest-maximizing tin men who don't need it. So as Wal-Mart mows down local communities in America and NAFTA mows them down in rural Mexico, the conventional economist stands silent on this issue. Economists and non-economists alike should read this book, and pass it around to friends in their community--if it's still there.
--Arlie Russell Hochschild, University of California, Berkeley and author of The Time Bind and The Commercialization of Intimate Life

A brilliantly reasoned and long overdue expose of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of conventional economic thinking. If you are concerned about the decline of community and moral standards in public life, read this book.
--David C. Korten, author of The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community and When Corporations Rule the World

With breathtaking range, Stephen Marglin brilliantly turns the world of economics upside-down as he reveals the roots of economics in the Western myth of modernity and the destruction of community. At once analytical and intuitive, Marglin unites the talents of an economist, a storyteller's humor and a skeptical mind to offer a new way of thinking about economy and economics.
--Stephen Gudeman, University of Minnesota

The Dismal Science is a profound critique of economics by one of its own. It could not be more timely--the breakdown of human connection is arguably the most serious problem facing humanity, as it underlies other ills such as violence, environmental degradation and inequality. Stephen Marglin has produced a beautifully written and penetratingly intelligent argument about the role of the market in that process.
--Juliet Schor, Boston College and author of The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need

Stephen Marglin makes a powerful and convincing argument for how thinking like an economist undermines community. Suddenly, the choices of those who reject global capitalism seem far more reasonable, because the globalization of capital brings with it the economistic thinking that destroys local values, forcing us to choose between material prosperity and spiritual health. Yet this tension is made invisible by a pseudo-universal ideology about human nature. Marglin thus provides a persuasive foundation for the Politics of Meaning. (Tikkun )

Marglin's demonstration of the relationship between mainstream economics and the destruction of communities is seductive, convincing, and well documented.
--Danny Lang (Irish Times )

This is an exceptionally learned, uncompromisingly contrarian critique of markets and economics by a member of the Department of Economics at Harvard University. Stephen Marglin emphasizes the costs of market transactions and blames economics for supplying the associated frame of reference. The Dismal Science is patently the result of a lifetime of reading and cogitating about conceptual issues related to market exchanges and economists’ approaches to them. Some historical background is given but what is mainly offered is extended commentary on the history of thought and on everyday practice.
--Eric Jones (EH.NET )

Product Description

See "Stephen Marglin on the Future of Capitalism" at FORA.tv.

Economists celebrate the market as a device for regulating human interaction without acknowledging that their enthusiasm depends on a set of half-truths: that individuals are autonomous, self-interested, and rational calculators with unlimited wants and that the only community that matters is the nation-state. However, as Stephen Marglin argues, market relationships erode community. In the past, for example, when a farm family experienced a setback--say the barn burned down--neighbors pitched in. Now a farmer whose barn burns down turns, not to his neighbors, but to his insurance company. Insurance may be a more efficient way to organize resources than a community barn raising, but the deep social and human ties that are constitutive of community are weakened by the shift from reciprocity to market relations.

Marglin dissects the ways in which the foundational assumptions of economics justify a world in which individuals are isolated from one another and social connections are impoverished as people define themselves in terms of how much they can afford to consume. Over the last four centuries, this economic ideology has become the dominant ideology in much of the world. Marglin presents an account of how this happened and an argument for righting the imbalance in our lives that this ideology has fostered.

(20080301)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 376 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; 1 edition (January 31, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674026543
• ISBN-13: 978-0674026544
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 3.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #516,773 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The right idea, but poor execution, February 20, 2009

By	Nathan Fiala (Irvine, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was excited to read a critique of the economic system I had not heard before. Sadly, this book offers little insight that hasn't been said elsewhere, and better.

If you're looking for a criticism of capitalism and economic ideology, I suggest sticking to the original sources of Karl Marx and latter researchers that build on his work: the Frankfurt school, including Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, and, more importantly, Jurgen Habermas. Sadly, Marglin does not cite any of these thinkers (except Marx).

In the end, this book reads to me like the author is unhappy that the world has changed and is convinced it was all better once, long ago.

Also, do not buy this book thinking that Stephen Marglin is a practicing economist. While he was trained in economics and teaches at Harvard, he has not worked professionally for decades, and his only research that I am aware of is from the 1970s. That is not to say his opinion is unimportant, but it is not that of one engaged in the field.

14 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Capitalism is Wrong, May 12, 2008

By	Robert Jones (Emporia, Kansas USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

There are many things wrong with capitalist economics and I agree with Marglin that economic theory is made up of a great many half truths. I believe that Margin misses the most serious error in capitalism however. Capitalist economics employs a theory of value which is not consistent with traditional human values and society's legal system.

We must begin by distinguishing two different sorts of quantities, scalars and vectors. A scalar is a quantity that can be described by just a number. Your age, or height, or weight, or the number of people in a room, these are scalar quantities. A vector, on the other hand, is a quantity that requires two or more numbers in order to describe it. An example might be the journey "3 blocks north and 5 blocks east." These two distances must remain distinct. Motion northward can not substitute for motion eastward or vice versa.

Value monism is the idea that there is only one thing of value (pleasure perhaps) or that at least it is possible to define a single "common currency" in terms of which the value of all things can be measured (money). Value pluralism is simply the rejection of value monism, the idea that there are two or more things to be valued (e.g. your wife's love and your child's life) and that they can not be reduced to, or compared via, some common currency.

In capitalist economic theory a utility function maps any state of affairs (with its costs, rewards, opportunities, etc.) to a real number, a scalar. Frequently this scalar utility is simply money; in other situations it is some more generalized scalar quantity.

Human beings have multiple needs. For instance, we need air to breathe, water to drink, and food to eat. Many of these needs are "incommensurable," that is, they can not be measured by a common standard; one can not be traded off for another. No amount of water can make up for having no food to eat. A plentiful supply of fresh air can not make up for a lack of water to drink.

Human values, in turn, arise from our needs and are also incommensurable. (Berlin, Concepts and Categories, PU Press, 1998, pg XVIII) Economic utility must be a vector quantity, it can not be a scalar "money." Business and capitalism are profoundly in error when they employ a mere scalar utility. A common currency is simply impossible. (Just the instruction "travel 8 blocks" is not adequate to represent "3 blocks north and 5 blocks east.") In the words of Beardon et al "contrary to the widely held and inveterate belief of economists, there does exist a preference relation which is not representable by a utility function." (Beardon et al, 2002, J. Math. Economics, vol. 37, pg 17) Von Neumann and Morgenstern said "We have conceded that one may doubt whether a person can always decide which of two alternative...he prefers...It leads to what may be described as a many-dimensional vector concept of utility." (von Neumann and Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, 1944)

Business and capitalism require value monism while the human value system is characterized by value pluralism; you need only observe the legal system. Upon being found guilty of some crimes it is only required that you pay a fine, whereas in other cases you must pay with your life, or at least some years worth. No one would be satisfied to see a serial killer merely pay a fine each time he took another life.

Not all human activities can be accurately modeled as a marketplace.