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The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
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NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."





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Wednesday, December 18, 2013

RESPONSE TO A COMMENT

I was just checking the comments, as I do every day, and found a very troubling comment on an old August post by "Theceltiberian" [??] about Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis.  He [she, they] says that they have turned very much to the right in recent years.  Can that be true?  Does anyone know?

5 comments:

Matt said...

I don't know about Bowles, but Gintis is, at least, hard to classify these days. He's certainly not a Marxists now (if he ever was) and not enthusiastic about at least many forms of socialism. Perhaps the most interesting snap-shot of his views comes from his extremely numerous amazon reviews. (They are always interesting, so I check them once a month or so.) See, in particular, his review of Gerald Cohen's _Why Not Socialism?_, or his very long list of his reviews in general, including books on all sorts of topics, exercise equipment, vitamins, and so on. What picture emerges from this isn't clear to me, but it's worth looking at.

Robert Paul Wolff said...

Wow. Am I ever out of touch. I had no idea that Herb identifies himself as a Sociobiologist. Maybe I ought to read some of what they have been publishing lately.

But hey, I am almost eighty. I don't have to do anything I don't want to!

Utopian Yuri said...

we had Gintis over as a dinner guest about ten years ago when he was on my housemate's committee. He spoke favorably of welfare reform, and if I recall correctly, of Bush's wars against Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jerry Fresia said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jerry Fresia said...

Herb Gintis was on my dissertation committee; I took several classes with him and Sam. Great guys. Herb and Sam co-authored a book (A Cooperative Species) in 2011 and they "revisited" their Schooling in Capitalist America in 2001 (afirmatively) which can be found in a PFD file here: http://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/soced.pdf
And if you want to see Herb explaining his transition from "revolutionary" to "evolutionary economist" go here: http://anthro.palomar.edu/time/time_5.htm