Page 26 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

Genealogy of Political Economy 15

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desires (through invidious imitation, habituation, or addiction, for example ).
Nor are persuasion and deeper psychological forms of indoctrination to be
studied as influencing tastes and preferences. Nor are tastes and preferences
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to be judged as to their soundness. Rather, they are to be sovereign.
This new or neoclassical economics departed from classical political econ-
omy in yet another, perhaps even more fundamental way. Continuing in the vein
established by Stanley Jevons 15 and other founders (Leon Walras, Vilfredo
Pareto, Francis Edgeworth, Alfred Marshall), it abstracts from the social, politi-
cal, institutional, and cultural setting. Economics became essentially a mathe-
matical-deductive system—in stark contrast to classical political economy,
which was fully engaged with the cultural/political/economic environment. 16

CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL ECONOMY

The “New” (Chicago) Political Economy

Although by 1900 neoclassicism had replaced classical political economy as
the economics orthodoxy, political economy in various guises persisted, al-
beit often at the margins, and today can be a vibrant alternative approach to
economic and social analysis. Unfortunately, at present, contending forces vie
for the title, and hence political economy can connote even antithetical ap-
proaches. One such contender is the Chicago School, also known as the new
or positive political economy, which aspires to reclaim the name of its classi-
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cal predecessor even while extending neoclassical methods into myriad new
applications. Leading exponents have included Gary Becker, Richard Posner,
Ronald Coase, and George Stigler. Becker, for example, applied neoclassical
modes of analysis to family planning, discrimination, marriage, divorce, sui-
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cide, addiction, and crime, while Coase gained fame by proposing the com-
modification of pollution as the preferred “solution” to environmental woes. 19
According to the Chicago theorists, most if not all areas of life “are subject to
the analysis of maximizing or calculations of advantage,” making neoclas-
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sicism eminently suited for such extensions.
However, certain areas do remain out of bounds for these “new” politi-
cal economists. As noted by Samuels, conservative political economists do
not deploy neoclassical theory and its understanding of the self-interested
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use of state power to investigate the origin of private property, likely be-
cause such study could undermine the basic neoclassical postulate that
property is inviolable. Nor do they, as we have seen, address persuasion
and other factors influencing tastes and preferences, again in all likelihood
because that type of investigation would undermine the axiom of consumer