Sen's 'negation of a negation'.

What happens to a kid who comes straight from a village and starts doing a degree in Econ in a big city? The answer, if the kid never studied Commerce and had no family connection with business, is that he might believe absurd things if they were presented to him mathematical guise. After all, maths works in Physics- right? Surely it must also work in Econ? 

Sen read Arrow's Impossibility paper in his first year as an undergrad. He didn't get that Arrow was making impossible assumptions- perfect information, costless computation etc- and thus his model was not compossible with the physical universe. Indeed, in an Arrow Debreu world there would be no need for human language or communication of any sort. Also because Arrow defined a guy who isn't a dictator as a dictator, his theorem was an example of ex falso quodlibet- any nonsense logically follows from a stupid lie.

This is Sen reminiscing with Angus Deaton- 

I do want to come back to Ken Arrow, because no one had as big an influence on me as Arrow, vastly enriching my growing involvement with classical political economy,

which was wholly innocent of Arrow's absurd assumptions.  

particularly Marx—but also Smith (I was interested in both from my school days). There was, however, something seriously missing, I was beginning to consider, in the Marxian line of thinking—rich as it was. Maybe politics? It would be absurd to think of Marx as being apolitical, but he was basically uninterested in political organization,

The reverse is the case. He was active in political organization but being drunk and an exile and having a fucking horrible personality meant political organizations gave him a wide berth.  

while having deep insights in political philosophy.

Like what? Factory workers would take over the world? Niggah puhleeze! 

Arrow’s social choice theory, with its foundational involvement in the relation between people’s preferences, interests, desires, and values on one side, and democratic social choice on the other,

This is what Arrow's social choice lacks. People vote for guys who will make decisions for them. A Dictator is not a Dictator if he isn't shooting anyone so as to run things his way.  

supplemented classical political economy beautifully.

There was zero relationship between the two things. Preference revelations mechanisms are a part of econ- auction design, mechanism design, theory of incomplete contracts etc- but they are not a part of classical political economy which was about which bunch of rich white guys should run things. Ought they to be Dukes or Viscounts? Or was it better if their daddies had made billions out of coal or iron or opium? What was certain was that only those with an assured private income and a country Mansion and an elegant Town House and a charming wife and a filthy slut of a mistress could be trusted with running the country.  

It also made me wonder whether, in the eighteenth century, the mathematician Condorcet’s interest in establishing an early form of social choice theory was influenced by his wanting to go beyond Adam Smith’s economics—on which Condorcet was an expert (and not just on committee decisions with which he is more usually associated).

This is a view promoted by Sen's wife, Emma Rothschild. The fact is, Condorcet's wife had written something influenced by Smith's theory of moral sentiments which she had translated a couple of years after becoming a widow. Condorcet knew of Smith's work- he was a friend of the translator of Wealth of Nations who had also been his wife's tutor in English. Was he influenced by it? No. He was working in the same field and was supposed to write a commentary on the Wealth of Nations but nothing came of it. Why? France was the richer country and Turgot and, soon, Condorcet himself, was of more consequence than some Scottish professor. 'Sympathy' was attractive to Condorcet. 'Self interest' less so. There is a story that Condorcet regularly met Smith at his wife's salon. Sadly, she can't have entertained Smith at her salon because she was a little baby when Smith was in France. 

Voting rules have been important in different places and at different times- Venice was the place that they most hypertrophied- but Social Choice theory has never been important. Rhetoric has been important. Oratory has been important. Ideals and Sentiments have been important but stupid mathematical models churning out garbage have never mattered to anyone except those publishing in that sterile field till they find something less boring or more remunerative. 

Arrow came to me as a flood of illumination. If Arrow filled a big gap in my naive thinking, Galbraith filled another, in particular how to keep in check privileged people with their particular social ambitions through a system of countervailing powers.

i.e. Trade Unions curbing the power of monopsonistic Employers. The trouble is that if one factor is mobile and the other isn't, then the countervailing power only secures a rent for one generation before ceasing to exist as the jobs are off shored. The Germans grasped this and got Unions to agree to a 'stability and growth pact'. In other words, a pragmatic deal was better than 'countervailing power'.  

Each interest group may press the society to go in its favored direction, but the presence of many interest groups restrains the dominance of any one of them.

Or permits the dominance of the one with highest elasticity and thus least 'skin in the game' because all the others are stalemated. How did Trump capture the Republican Party? How did he get to the White House? Will he do it again? As far as I can see, he delivered two things- lower taxes and more Conservative Judges- and then just did as he pleased. Perhaps, the verdict on Biden will be that he delivered nothing and just did as he pleased. His party was so deadlocked between disparate interest groups that they were stuck with a useless tosser whose claim to the top job arose from his never having been good enough for it while yet in his prime. 

If Arrow can be seen as a positive supplement to Marx

then he can also be seen as a positive supplement to Hitler. 

(adding to what I had got from Marx), Galbraith was, in a more negative way, a denial of Marx’s temptation to rely on his favored set of values, which he saw as good for society.

Life denied Marx's temptation by making him useless. He was an exile in an England where Capitalists ruled the roost and Germans were only tolerated because they were good at killing Frenchmen.  

Even if the idea of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” may sound attractive in an egalitarian way, it can play havoc with building a pluralist society.

No kidding!  

Of course I did get a huge amount from Marx. This included a basic concern with the underdogs of society.

Marx didn't help the underdogs. He himself was a charity case. Still, pretending to be for underdogs is better remunerated than actually being an underdog.  

But there were also many other things in Marx, such as the philosophical idea of “objective illusion”—he talked about it as “false consciousness.”

That was Engels.  

Even though the sun and the moon may look—in objective observation—as equal in size, they are not;

We can't look directly at the Sun. We can gaze on the moon to our heart's content. This tells us that the Sun is brighter than the moon. It must be further away because when it is directly above us we feel hot. This means, by the law of perspective, it must be bigger than the moon. We are pretty much hardwired to make these sorts of adjustments. Thus, in 'objective observation' nobody really thinks the moon and the Sun are the same size. Similarly, we understand that a great fire at a distance will appear as small as the candle flame before us. On the other hand, it is certainly true that people shrink as they walk farther and farther away from me. This is probably due to Marx's influence on Condorcet.  

and similarly, what the laborers are given—their wages—and what they contribute to production may look similar in size in market economics, but they are not.

How the fuck would they look similar? A guy plucks and brings in ten sacks of apples. His wage is equal to maybe the whole-sale price of one sack of apples.  What happened to the other nine sacks? The worker understands that the landlord got some of that money because the orchard is his and the overseer got some money and the fucking Bankers got some and the fucking Tax-man got some and so on and so forth. 

Also Marx provided a clear understanding that payment according to needs would be a very different principle from rewarding work and labor.

But he also said there would be payment according to contribution till scarcity disappears.  

Marx discussed the plurality of moral principles extensively in his last substantial work, Critique of the Gotha Program (Marx 1875).

Where he said that talk about rights was nonsense.

Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

I have dealt more at length with the "undiminished" proceeds of labor, on the one hand, and with "equal right" and "fair distribution", on the other, in order to show what a crime it is to attempt, on the one hand, to force on our Party again, as dogmas, ideas which in a certain period had some meaning but have now become obsolete verbal rubbish, while again perverting, on the other, the realistic outlook, which it cost so much effort to instill into the Party but which has now taken root in it, by means of ideological nonsense about right and other trash so common among the democrats and French socialists.

He criticized the Social Democratic Party of German Workers, which produced the Gotha Program, for being concerned only with distribution according to work (seeing working people as “nothing but workers”), ignoring the varying human needs of people.

Very true. Like Adam Smith, Marx was a great believer in the right of small kiddies to work

 A general prohibition of child labor is incompatible with the existence of large-scale industry and hence an empty, pious wish. Its realization -- if it were possible -- would be reactionary, since, with a strict regulation of the working time according to the different age groups and other safety measures for the protection of children, an early combination of productive labor with education is one of the most potent means for the transformation of present-day society.

In this he came much closer to what we call welfare economics now.

It is particularly important that disabled LGTQ trans-gender kiddies of color be allowed to work for at least 4 hours a day as chimney sweeps or unblockers of sewage pipes or other things of that sort because an early combination of this sort of productive labor together with a sound education in Marxist literature represents one of the most potent means of transforming present-day society.  

A theory of justice, I was beginning to consider, could start from either end—fulfilling needs or fairly rewarding work.

But animals fulfil needs. Our distant ancestors fulfilled needs long before we had language or a 'theory of justice'. As for 'fairly rewarding work'- that has never been the concern of Justice or Politics or Religion or anything else.  Either the work itself yields utility and is its own reward or else it isn't done save for reward or fear of punishment. Even then, if a superior reward is available or punishment can be circumvented, the thing is not done. 

So surely, there was a recognition by Marx of moral plurality.

There was no recognition of morality not founded in dialectical materialism.  

And yet he did not get very interested in countervailing powers, which is central to the practice of politics. Marx shared the common illusion that if somehow you get dedicated people to take charge of the government, they are going to govern things well.

No. He thought that the economy would change to such an extent that 'scarcity' would disappear. Everybody would have plenty of everything and would only work because they wanted to.  

Ken Galbraith’s American Capitalism, which in a sense is a praise of capitalism (one aspect of it), helped to shatter the illusion. He presented quite a profound understanding of the corruption of power and the need to restrain even dedicated people, including those dedicated to high political objectives. I had borrowed Galbraith’s book for four hours from a bookshop in Calcutta (this would have been early in 1953) and I got hugely absorbed in it, as I was trying to finish reading it in a coffee shop. I tried to explain to the coffee shop manager that paying for one cup of coffee was sufficient for me to earn the right to sit there for four hours and reading this new book. I didn’t have more money than that, and I wanted to read the book—and furthermore, the light was very good on my table. My persistence worked. I’m so glad that Angus brought this up. Those were very formative periods in the development of my understanding.

Sen didn't notice that 'countervailing power' might mean nothing getting done whatsoever. If we know that the other party could get to divide the cake or extort a big share, we might never bake it. This was what was happening in India.  

Among the many influences were the ideas that I got from Arrow in particular (they established a life-time interest in me), but this was supplemented by other contributions I could read, such as Galbraith’s. In the newly independent India, which was trying to be a successful democracy,

it couldn't be a successful anything else. Why? The Army and Civil Service would only back an administration which could get a majority in Parliament. Otherwise, the Army would take over. But, in India, the Army was too narrowly recruited, but still too heterogeneous, for this to be a lasting solution.  

the feasibility of consistent democratic politics was a much discussed issue. Could we have democratic consistency? In many academic discussions (Calcutta was full of academic politics at that time), a common interpretation was that Ken Arrow was showing that you couldn’t have democratic consistency.

This is silly. It was obvious that the Westminster model only worked well if you had two cohesive national parties. Add in a third or a fourth and you get instability or cyclicity. But India had seen that happen in the Thirties. Undivided Bengal had unstable coalitions when Sen was growing up. Why the fuck could he not see that Voting paradoxes had defined the politics of Partition? The answer is that studying in Shanitniketan turned you into a rustic retard even if your parents were highly educated and urbane. 

But it was not, it seemed to me, what he was actually showing. There was a need for some “negation of negation” (to borrow from Hegel), I was convinced.

This is the notion that somehow it would be easy for property to suddenly come under public ownership. The idea is that actually everything belongs to everybody. Then nasty capitalists stole everything which was like totes a negation dude. Obviously, we could negate that negation quite easily just with a bit of positive thinking- innit?

What I don't get is why Calcutta University couldn't cram a little basic Marshallian econ into this cretin's head. Property exists if you can gain title to it and then protect it. This requires resources. If you supply something much in demand you will get property. If that property is taken away you have no incentive to supply shit.  

While trying to dispute that pessimistic understanding of Arrow’s impossibility result, it became clear to me that I should pursue this issue in a bigger way, in addition to whatever mathematical propositions I might want to pursue (they were of course fun). Angus is right to think that it “sort of launched my career”! I was a first-year undergraduate in Calcutta then—I was young (I think I was around 17), but rather determined.

What launched Sen's career in stupidity was stupidity. He looked a likely enough lad being quite mathsy. Maybe he could prove some theorem or at least teach it. But, Sen's celebrity rests on his being a brown monkey from a shithole who says there's plenty of food when there isn't and democracy has magic powers though, on two separate occasions, in Bengal in his lifetime, transition to Democracy caused huge excess mortality as a result of  food availability shocks.  

After two years of undergrad education in Calcutta, I went to Cambridge, and almost no one encouraged me in my interest in social choice theory.

A bunch of beggars unable to feed or defend themselves aren't a society. Please, brown monkey-man, don't do Social Choice theory till your people have evolved something which looks more like a Society rather than a stinky pile of shit. 

Some were frankly hostile. Joan Robinson, who was personally very fond of me, tried to persuade me that to get into social choice theory would be a complete  waste of time.

Nothing wrong with wasting the time of wealthy kids who are only going to go into Daddy's Merchant Bank or get a job in the Civil Service. That was what Sen was hired to do and he did it well.  

Richard Kahn was totally hostile. Nicholas Kaldor did what he normally tended to do, namely encourage you on the ground that a certain amount of folly in your life is necessary for character building. The only one who took an interest was, oddly enough, a Marxist, namely Maurice Dobb—perhaps the most famous Marxist economist in Britain then.

his views probably harmed his academic career. He was dismissive of 'market-socialism' and 'marginal cost pricing'. 

He took a lot of interest in it. He was the only one among the Cambridge economics faculty who lectured regularly on welfare economics,

as opposed to Public Finance which is about how to get money to make Social Choices real 

and indeed a number of his fellow left-wingers regarded that to be a great mistake—“a bourgeois folly”—on Maurice’s part.

Since Dobb was rejecting marginalism, there had to be some other way of deriving the demand curve while the supply curve was determined by the 'labor theory of value'. Sen's Capability approach is basically about ignoring what people want to buy and substituting what we think they ought to have so as to be capable of producing whatever the Marxist Holy Ghost thinks they should. Remember, in Marx's Utopia there is no scarcity. People produce things for the sheer pleasure of giving it away to strangers. 

This is a fairy story in which all economic questions are answered by non-economic means. The price of a thing is the labor it embodies and, moreover, the thing is supplied gratis. Also people only take things which enable them to fulfil their capability to contribute voluntarily to others in Society. Thus if you are capable of cleaning sewers you would be consuming such things as make that task delightful and invigorating.  

Dobb was rather allergic to mathematical reasoning (like many other members of the Cambridge Economics faculty at that time), but he wanted me to explain to him the substance of Arrow’s theorem and why it was interesting.

Coz it would be cool if math could prove 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' beat boring old Democracy. 

Sen showed a gravitational attraction to everything that was utterly useless in the Econ available to him. One reason may have been that he didn't have the mathematical chops to do dynamic programming or Ito integrals. But surely he could have done bread and butter Econometrics or O.R or something of that sort? 

The other teacher taking a somewhat sporadic interest in my involvement with social choice theory was a semi-Marxist, named Piero Sraffa. He had been very close to Antonio Gramsci, the great leftist intellectual, who established the Italian Communist Party and founded the extraordinary journal, L’Ordine Nuovo.

The paper was shit. It lasted for a three or four years and may have had as many as 10,000 subscribers at the time when industrial action was its peak. But workers' Soviets couldn't run factories as well as feed those who toiled there. In Turin, they did try for about 3 weeks. Then it became obvious to the workers themselves that Gramsci was full of shit. Since the Army stayed loyal, there could be no Communist Revolution in Italy. All that Gramsci did was pave the way to Mussolini. To be fair, he'd had a very tough life and wasn't a murderous bastard so much as a guy who was ga ga for a regime of murderous bastards which was bound to become nice and sweet coz...urm... negation of a negation- right? 

Consider how many hours students have wasted on this sort of Sen-ile shite over the last 40 years. That time could have been devoted to masturbation which is the negation of Sen's negation of a negation.