me: > >>BTW, what's your alternative. (I am NOT telling you to put up or shut > >>up. But I do think that it's best to have alternative rather than > >>simply trashing the hegemonic school of economics. If there's no > >>alternative, good-hearted and even smart lefty economists might be > >>tempted to drink the kool-aid and become lefty neoclassicals or > >>worse.)
Robert: >>I agree. I used to bristle when people said "you can't beat something with nothing" or "you can't defeat a theory unless you come up with another one." You can, though at a cost. Sociology pulled down the structural-functionalist hegemony without replacing it with another. Now sociological theory resembles Berlin in the 20s or Beirut in the 70s: different factions shooting at each other, no one strong enough to take over, nonparticipants fleeing for safer ground, in sociology called "grounded theory". >>Fortunately the group called "heterodox economists" is beginning to coalesce, though still a far cry from having a paradigm as comprehensive as the neoclassicals or the Marxists.<< he then added: >> Let me clarify the last paragraph. By heterodox economists I mean the real ones, e.g. http://www.heterodoxeconomics.net << are you saying the Austrians and Marxists aren't heterodox? as the kids say, "whatevs." I really don't care about how people define words that much. But the contrast in my mind is between the dominant/hegemonic school of economics (which includes neither of those schools) and the number of "heterodox" schools that nip at the orthodox/neoclassical school's heels. (It's like the relationship between the old Mexican PRI and the various off-brand parties that could never win -- until Fox's PAN took advantage of the changing Zeitgeist.) BTW, at least in economics, Marxists don't have a very coherent paradigm. Maybe comprehensive, but not coherent. It's like Beirut in the 1970s... -- Jim Devine / "The truth is at once less sinister and more dangerous." -- Naomi Klein.
