Suchergebnisse

Translated from Voprosy Istorii KPSS, no. 8, 1973.

The flow of both productive and speculative investment into housing relates to the state of capital accumulation in other economic sectors, as hypothesised in the 'circuits of capital' argument, but it also relates to the incentive to 'switch' investment into and out of housing, and therefore to expectations of ground rent and the (changing) social conditions that enable ground rent extraction. This is the first of three papers in which the relationships involved in these processes are explored. A series of theoretical problems arising from the argument are dealt with, principally relating to its seeming economic determinism and to an inappropriately narrow treatment of crisis and social change. In the subsequent papers, in this journal, these various ideas will be used to reflect on housing market and related social change in Melbourne from the 1930s to the 1980s.

Two approaches to ideology that view it as a belief system & as a form of discourse are contrasted, & an argument is made for the latter. Viewing ideology as a discourse enables a more adequate account of the diversity of beliefs among members of an ideological movement, & also locates its causal power at the level of social conventions rather than within individual psychology. This theoretical discussion is linked with the case of Soviet-type societies, serving as the basis for a reinterpretation of ideology's role in the maintenance & more recent decline of these political systems.

This article examines certain issues in postwar economic theory and compares them with related issues in the nascent fields of cybernetics, industrial dynamics, and operations research. Because all these fields had close connections to MIT, the comparison provides an opportunity to assess to what degree a peculiar MIT "style" of economics, developed particularly by Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow, could be attributed to the MIT context, and to what degree this style developed in dialogue with a larger conversation taking place in and around the American economic profession as a whole. It is concluded that there were significant affinities in theoretical interest running between MIT economics and other fields at MIT, which revolved around the emergence of macro-scale phenomena out of the dynamic interplay of local decision-making processes. However, the methodology through which Samuelson and Solow, in particular, addressed these issues was peculiar to economic discourse.

The article contrasts two approaches to ideology which view it, respectively, as a belief system and as a form of discourse, and argues for the second. Viewing ideology as a belief system involves unwarranted assumptions about the uniformity of convictions among the adherents of an ideology and reduces its causal power to its contingent capacity to condition beliefs. Viewing ideology as a discourse enables a more adequate account of the diversity of beliefs among members of an ideological movement and also locates its causal power at the level of social conventions rather than individual psychology. The power of ideology is based on respect, not faith. This theoretical discussion is linked with the case of Soviet-type societies, serving as the basis for a reinterpretation of ideology's role in the maintenance and more recent decline of these political systems.