16 SOCIAL SCIENTIST least some of us are not convinced of—might transform significantly the terrain (and the appeal) of AM. 9. It is fascinating that Roemer is willing to object to treating as autonomous individuals' time preferences, but he refuses to extend this objection to other forms of preference or preference itself. Roemer states that 'although one does observe different rates of time preference, it is a mistake to consider those differences to be a consequence of autonomous choices that people have made. .. Attitudes toward saving are shaped by culture, and cultures are formed by the objective conditions their populations.' Roemer continues: 'when one sees patterns of behavior that characterize whole populations or classes, one must look for factors of social origin' (62). Fine. But why doesn't this then apply to optimizing and rational behavior in general? After all, if all people base their behavior on preferences, shouldn't we insist on a discussion of this relationship's 'sodal origin?' 10. 'A person's class is not something that should be taken as a given before the person begins economic activity; it is an economic characteristic that emerges from market activity. A person acquires membership in a certain class by virtue of rational activity on her part, by virtue of choosing the best option available subject to the constraints she faces, which are determined by the value of the property she owns' (Roemer 1988, 9-10). 11. Roemer (1988, 40) states that the capitalist's preferences, 'for whatever reason, are for accumulation and dictate that she expand her capital stock as rapidly as possible.' He adds, 'I will not inquire into what social norms or other constraints or forces give rise to these preferences in capitalists. Suffice it to say that competition among capitalists forces each to expand as rapidly as possible in order to have the funds to innovate and not be driven out of the market altogether* (40). 12. The preceding argument resembles Bruce Norton's (1988) recent criticism of the work of the 'social structures of accumulations' theorists. Norton argues that the same abstract notion of agents with interests fixed by their common location in a certain economic class position characterize-} the work of these theorists in the same way that it does the work of the AM school. We of course recognize that there are other significant—and from their respective viewpoints, determinative—differences between the sodal structures of accumulation school and AM. 13. An excellent book which reviews the debates within and outside of Marxism over the decentered subject is Paul Smith (1988). 14. Elster (1986, 22) states that methodological individualism is 'a form of reductionism, which is to say that it enjoins us to explain complex phenomena in terms of their simpler components.' Elster goes on (1985,18-22) to show that even individual intentions may be leduced further (this is his discussion of 'sub-intentional causality'). However, Elster does nothing with his insight that Marx's view of causal mechanisms operating 'behind the backs' of agents is apt for characterizing 'psychic causality.' Elster's discussions of individual motivation under capitalism assume the existence of a psychically-unified subject, and so he drops the reduction of the psyche to its component parts in all subsequent analysis. REFERENCES Amariglio, Jack, and Antonio Callari. 1989. 'Marxian Value Theory and the Problem of the Subject: The Role of Commodity Fetishism' Rethinking Marxism^ Volume 2, No. 3 (Fall). Callari, A. 1988. 'Some Developments in Marxian Theory since Schumpeter.' In W.O. Thweatt, ed.. Classical Political Economy. Boston: Kluwer Academic Press. Cullenberg, S. 1988. 'Theories of Social Totality, the Okishio Theorem, and the Marxian Theory of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall.' Ph.D. diss.. University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Elster, Jon. 1985. Making Sense of Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ————. 1986. An Introduction to Karl Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hirshleifer, Jack. 1977. 'Economics from a Biological Point of View.' Journal of Law and Economics. Vol. 20, No. 1 (April).