The University of Western Ontario

Undergraduate, Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism

About

I'm currently majoring in Economics, Politics, & Philosophy (Hons. Spec.) at Western University, and intend to write my honors thesis on “Non-Economics.” I’ve come to believe that the economic methodology developed by Piero Sraffa stands in the same relation to marginalist economics as Non-Euclidean geometry does to Non-Euclidean geometry. Drawing from the Non-Philosophy of François Laruelle, in addition to the work of Wittgenstein and Gramsci (friends of Sraffa), I would like to explore the full implications of this heuristic.

In particular, I feel in order for a research programme to be scientific, its method should reflect the nature of its object, i.e. as one learns the methodology of a given discipline, one should simultaneously be learning about the structure of the object being studied. When one learns formulas for chemistry, one simultaneously learns the properties of the elements; when one arduously fills out syntax trees, one is certain that one’s results reflect the patterns belonging to language itself. The lack of this simultaneity, I feel, is how economics differs from the rigorous sciences—marginalism constructs a logically consistent grid of relations which it then lays upon market phenomena, and Sraffa has shown (for example) how the concept of marginal product of capital has no basis in reality, but is in fact a circular, since it can be ‘known’ only when one already knows the rate of profit. While such instances do not invalidate marginalism, there are some cases (such as the theory of trade, which draws heavily from capital theory) where it clearly falls short.

Rather than the construction of a transcendent ‘grid’, I think that it is possible to construct an ‘immanent’ economics, drawing from the structure of the market itself. Such a project would depend heavily on empirical data; therefore, I intend to undertake a close study of business structures, infrastructure/logistics, and public administration. I am inclined, à la Sraffa, to favor the supply-side, since ‘subjective’ concepts in economics—e.g. Keynes’ “propensity to save”—are unsatisfying, and Sraffa has shown that they are not needed in order to construct an axiomatic methodology. Although I’m highly interested in research programmes addressing the demand-side, particularly that of neuroeconomics, their comparative lack of rigor induces me to relegate them to an auxiliary place for the time being.