T1B

It sounds like a throwback to 'scientism', an intellectual fashion in the 50's and 60's. It did give birth to structuralism among other things, which wasn't a total waste of time.

He's trying to assign and attribute scientific values to something (in this case, economics) and comes to grief explaining away subjectivity. It's the educational equivalent of wearing bell-bottoms.

You mentioned this when we chatted over a couple beers while you visited here. I looked into it, but at this stage in my life I'm not up to anything so substantive. I guess that's why I'm here.

Not slagging him off because he's a capitalist couchon - I've looked him up and think I'm right.

That sort of thinking affected both sides of the political spectrum, Lacan tried to make psychology a 'science', Christian Metz tried to make film theory scientific by formulating a 'language system' of cinema, and Althusser tried to make Marxism 'scientific' by postulating an epistemological break between the early and later Marx.

Not that what they were doing was worthless, it was groundbreaking and innovative at the time and we wouldn't be where we are now without them. I'd be suspicious of anyone attempting to cast concrete laws or prediction tables on something that's inherently superstitious, he's reinventing a square wheel.

Benefitting from a crisis problem is another thing, he's best left to his readers.