Why no Marx?

In an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Russell Jacoby asks

How is it that Freud is not taught in psychology departments, Marx is not taught in economics, and Hegel is hardly taught in philosophy? Instead these masters of Western thought are taught in fields far from their own. Nowadays Freud is found in literature departments, Marx in film studies, and Hegel in German. But have they migrated, or have they been expelled? Perhaps the home fields of Freud, Marx, and Hegel have turned arid. Perhaps those disciplines have come to prize a scientistic ethos that drives away unruly thinkers. Or maybe they simply progress by sloughing off the past.

Art Carden from the Division of Labour blog sent this letter to the Chronicle in response to Jacoby's article.

Russel Jacoby raises several interesting and important points about the apparently conspicuous absence of Freud, Hegel, and Marx from their respective disciplines ("Gone, and Being Forgotten," July 25). I cannot speak to the marginalization of Freud in psychology and Hegel in philosophy, but I can speak to why economists no longer read Marx: for the most part, we don't read him because he contributed nothing of lasting value to the discipline. My undergraduate comparative economic systems professor referred to Marxian economics as having been "stillborn." Thomas Sowell correctly points out that "there is no major premise, doctrine, or tool of analysis in economics today that derived from the writings of Karl Marx" and quotes Paul Samuelson's assessment of Marx as "a minor post-Ricardian."

As I prepare to teach a course entitled "Classical and Marxian Political Economy" this Spring--for which I now plan to assign Jacoby's article, I might add--I would be the first to agree that one's education should include a broad historical overview of the ideas in a particular discipline. I further agree that Marx is an important figure in the history of ideas. He plays a minor role in economics, however, because he has been thoroughly refuted.

Phil Miller at the Market Power blog agrees with Carden,

That's an accurate assessment. Economics is a social science that examines rational, self-interested thought (i.e. how beings behave when they compare the costs and benefits of actions). An economics education, especially at the graduate school level, prepares students to perform economic research and consists of the learning of the tools and language of economic analysis. While History of Thought is a useful undergraduate class for the reasons listed by Carden, its usefulness is not so great in learning the techniques of economics modeling.

History of Thought can give perspective on what we do today and how we do it, so I think it is useful to have a knowledge of the history of economics, and I think its interesting in and of itself. As far as Marx being useful to economics I trend to agree with both Carden and Miller, I don't see what he has contributed to the tool kit of the modern economist. Todays economic analysis and research has not grown from a Marxian base and has not developed Marxian themes.