Is there any difference between Alchian and Demsetz's ultra-liberalism and Bowles and Gintis's radicalism? My answer is that, ontologically and methodologically, there is none. Their common neoclassical methodology results in the same conception of power as incompatible with Walrasian competition, and the sole difference between them concerns the extension of power and competition in reality. Notwithstanding Bowles and Gintis's labelling as ‘radicals’, their conception coincides with the liberal view that sees competition as a natural and universal mode of social interaction, rather than as the historical product of the process of commodification that characterises capitalism.
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