[Pen-l] Thought Control In Economics --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Pen-l] Thought Control In Economics From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:33:34 -0400 Cc: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These accounts are symptoms of a pervasive system of thought control in economics. But no one knows more about how unwelcome ideas are kept from being expressed in economics departments and tainting the minds of curious students than Fred Lee, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He has documented over a hundred cases where economists who wouldn't drink the neoclassical Kool-Aid got pushed aside ? a problem that began over a century ago when the working classes started to teach themselves Marxist theory. "The leading economists of the day feared that if workers understood Marxist theory, the working class would realize how badly they were being exploited," he says. "Fearing this might lead to revolutionary fervor, economists sought to recast economic theory to neutralize the Marxist critique. They limited their neoclassical theory to looking at innocuous issues such as how prices change. They also sought to prove that everyone gets paid exactly in accordance with their net contribution to society, implying that workers aren't exploited and that is no basis for workers to claim a fairer share of the pie." Listening to Lee was making me realize that there is a time-honored tradition in economics of avoiding questions about who gets the wealth, who benefits and who loses with different economic policies. But there have been times when it was possible to explore other schools of thought. Mainstream control over economics was further consolidated during the hysteria of McCarthyism in the 1950s. By the 1960s US universities had been thoroughly cleansed of dissident economists. But this ultimately undermined the discipline's credibility. With the civil rights movement highlighting injustice in America, protests against the Vietnam War spreading across campuses, independence movements gaining strength in Africa and growing signs of an environmental crisis, the mainstream economics taught in lecture halls seemed stale and irrelevant to the commotion outside the classroom windows. Students took matters into their own hands and organized unofficial study groups in alternative theories of economics. In 1970, Lee himself discovered the vast literature written by heretical economists. Eventually, universities ended up infected with economists who were openly critical of mainstream economics ? those same self-taught students who had studied outside the accepted canon and had gone on to get graduate degrees and teaching positions. "For a brief time, many departments were tolerating a couple of dissident economists on staff," Lee reminisces, "but with the surge of neoliberalism in the 1980s, those who asked the bigger questions were once again being ostracized, demoted and expelled from universities. In the last decade, the mainstream professional associations have convinced state funding bodies in the UK, elsewhere in Europe, Australia and New Zealand that other schools of economic thought should not qualify for research funds." I ask Lee if economists get the teaching positions and the research money because, as they argue, they've got the better theory ? in effect, the better mousetrap ? while the economists with other perspectives have theories that don't work? "The mainstream economists don't have the better mousetrap," insists Lee. "Much neoclassical theory has zero value in explaining any socially relevant economic problems ? in many ways, like creationist theory, it fails to offer more than superficial explanations for most of what we observe in the world." Perhaps Lee has seen too many witch-hunts against economists who stray from the neoclassical song sheet and now sees the dark shadow of suppression everywhere. After all, there might be less sinister explanations as to why only variations on the same old simplistic theory can be taught, and taught so uncritically. David Colander, who is rare among economists for being accepted in both alternative and mainstream camps, suggests that much of the perpetuation of mainstream economics is simply the result of intellectual laziness. "It's easier to teach what you've always taught, a model that's been passed down from father to son again and again," says Colander. "Economists have nice jobs, they're at the center of society, they get to travel around the world, they have prestige, and why would you open up a can of worms if you could avoid it?" I go back to Lee and ask him if there are other factors, beyond trying to defend the status quo, that would explain why professors discourage deeper questioning from students. Why are they not willing to introduce competing economic theories so students can make up their own minds? "The fact that CEOs earn millions while their workers struggle by on minimum wages is either not examined in classrooms or is shown by the mainstream model to be completely consistent with properly working markets and to be leading to the best of all possible worlds," says Lee. "This of course makes most of the students who are concerned by such issues switch to other disciplines because they find economics pointless for what they want to know and do. So generally only the unquestioning students go on to get a PhD and become professors with views just like the professors that taught them." full: http://www.adbusters.org/print/1362 This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
