bourgeois economics masturbation

[leftist manson]

I used to wonder as to why there's so many brainwashed pro-capitalist fools in the major economics depts. of the world and why econ is much more right-oriented than let's say sociology, poli sci etc....

If you do this for four years straight without having any political economy or poli sci to 'subsume' it, then i'll pray for your health...

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s02_8595.pdf

Can we debate this although i know i didn't phrase my thesis properly....you guys know what i'm getting at, right??:(

[Raúl Duke]

That's the thing, and one fact that we noted (both the teacher and the class) during my HS AP economics courses, is that this field likes to exclude factors and they particular like to do their calculations/charts in ideal "Cēterīs paribus" environments when the reality is never as ideal.

The biggest impression I left with from that course was that the economy was so fragile. Once one aspect starts to fuck up, many other things begin to fuck up (the whole system seems to fuck up) and when you try to do things to reduce inflation or increase spending/employment (i.e. government or monetary policy) always a problem arises. It's like keeping capitalism stable seems like too much of a fucking big hassle why would anyone in their right minds think this is a "perfect" system.

I also learn in economics that full employment is not ideal/necessary in capitalism and full employment won't necessarily happen even in the most optimal circumstances. Suffice to say, by the end of the course I was even more pissed at the system.

[KC]

Econ majors don't care about politics. People that care about that stuff rarely if ever go into econ (much less someone who is left-leaning or revolutionary, who usually go into something as useless as political science or Africology). Trust me, I'm an econ major. :(


I also learn in economics that full employment is not ideal/necessary in capitalism and full employment won't necessarily happen even in the most optimal circumstances. Suffice to say, by the end of the course I was even more pissed at the system.Full employment generally isn't ideal because of frictional unemployment. Frictional unemployment is unemployment that occurs when a worker is between jobs. This can either be voluntary (they quit their old job in search of a new one) or involuntary (they were terminated). If we set aside the structural arguments that could be made about involuntary frictional unemployment, we can at least say that from the perspective of the worker it is not desirable.

However, voluntary frictional unemployment is desirable. Generally what happens in countries that try to inflate their employment statistics to the extreme of "full employment" are those countries that are creating jobs for the sake of raising their employment levels (a huge waste of resources/labour) or are assigning workers to jobs, which is something we are generally opposed to.

My point is basically that none of these issues are completely black and white, and are actually much more complicated and nuanced than most people believe. I'd say this is a valid criticism of bourgeois economics (it is), but it is also a valid criticism of many on the left who push for full employment itself without taking into account the complexities of the situation.

[IllicitPopsicle]

AP Macroeconomics taught me only this: The world may be filled with fools but the biggest fools are economists. They actually believe that starvation, poverty, oppressive work conditions are good things, and that anyone who wishes to fight these things - antiglobalization activists, for example - are idiots (See: Naked economics). I left the class with only a marginal grasp on the economy (should've taken micro) and a reaffirmed conviction that we're all screwed.

[ComradeRed]

That's the thing, and one fact that we noted (both the teacher and the class) during my HS AP economics courses, is that this field likes to exclude factors and they particular like to do their calculations/charts in ideal "Cēterīs paribus" environments when the reality is never as ideal. Mathematically, this is because they are trying to describe everything in terms of one variable.

Or more precisely, they want to use ordinary differential equations instead of partial differential equations. But the reality of the situation is that the latter is more accurate (and consequently more difficult to apply) when describing the situation.


I also learn in economics that full employment is not ideal/necessary in capitalism and full employment won't necessarily happen even in the most optimal circumstances. Suffice to say, by the end of the course I was even more pissed at the system. If you learned it in an economics course, it was just smoke blown out of someone's ass.

Neoclassical economics (well, any school that uses marginalism) is mathematically inconsistent. Sraffa demonstrated this back in 1925.


Econ majors don't care about politics.
Kind of...they are apologists to capitalism, and are interested in a free-ish market.

To that extent, they "care" about politics.

But other than that, it depends on the economist.

[RadioRaheem84]

Honestly, I learned next to nothing as an Econ major. I merely memorized a whole bunch of nothing and came out wondering how many of my peers actually understood and believed any of the crap we were taught. Out of eight classes which comprised my major, I only fully understood 3. The rest I devised ways to pass the course. I just gave up, simple as that.

Now that I became a Marxist, I understand a lot of what I didn't before and learned why I didn't; because it's irrational nonsense. It's pseudo-science that simply serves to apologize for inequality in society.

The Anarchist FAQ on Capitalism has a great section on economics, taking a whole mountain of sources dismantling the dismal science.

[anticap]

The purpose of academic economics under capitalism is to produce the next generation of its apologists.

'Economists are the enemies of society.' --Proudhon

[Kibbutznik]

I tend to disagree. I think there is much to learn from from economics, particularly macroeconomics, even in its neo-liberal and bourgeois forms.

Neo-classical theories of money and price are not necessarily wrong. What is generally mistaken about them is that the fundamental theoretical precepts are nearly impossible to meet. Markets are almost never pareto optimal, there is never equal access to information, and people are not 100 percent rational actors.

Nevertheless, they do have some important predictive powers, and it is good to learn what the theories actually imply rather than what the average neo-liberal thinks they imply.

For example, it's often stated as a truism from bourgeois economics that an increase in minimum wage will increase unemployment. According to neo-classical macroeconomics, this is in fact pretty much dead wrong. The only predictable outcome of increases in minimum wages are increases in inflation, which tends to affect everyone more or less equally, regardless of income or socioeconomic class.

Minimum wage increases are opposed not because they lead to economic inefficiency or unemployment, but rather because they will represent a downward redistribution of income.

It would not do us well to be so atavistic in regards to economics. Conceding that front to intellectual apologists for capitalism is not wise. Furthermore, much of bourgeois economics will still have some relevance after a transition to a socialist economy. So long as money exists, monetary policy and market dynamics will have some relevance to any economy.

[L.A.P.]

This is why we never get many socialist economists as much as we do get socialist sociologists and political scientists, because economics class is completely one-sided. The only time economics class teaches anything besides capitalism is a mini-lesson on Karl Marx and usually you'll hear snide remarks saying "that belongs in history class". The thing that makes me laugh is the fact that economics as we know it today is a type of social science, and one of the three founders of social science is Karl Marx. I still plan on getting a minor in economics for my bachelor's degree though.

[cyu]

From http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2010/10/01/130273644/-inside-job-director-charles-ferguson-taking-aim-at-wall-street

former Bush adviser Glenn Hubbard, who's now the dean of Columbia Business School — and, Ferguson argues, part of an academic culture that has allowed the financial services industry to corrupt the study of economics itself.

"Very prominent professors of economics, often people who've also held high government posts, are paid to testify in Congress," Ferguson explains. "They are paid to be expert witnesss in both civil and criminal trials. They're often paid to write papers that praise the financial services industry, and argue on behalf of deregulation of the industry. They make millions, in some cases tens of millions of dollars, doing this. And this is usually not disclosed."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlIoeTObmEk

From http://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/g9jrx/the_financial_services_industry_has_corrupted_the/c1ly57d

I'm old enough to remember paper after paper by "respected" doctors and researchers debunking the myth that cancer was caused by cigarette smoke. It was later found that these studies were funded by the people making billions off of cigarettes.

Today "respected" researchers are routinely quoted by climate change deniers. It is no secret that these "respected researchers" are paid off royally by Big Oil, people making billions of dollars yearly off of green house gas production.

Why should it come as a surprise to anyone that the people who are making hundreds of billions off the "crooked financial services industry" are paying millions to "prominent professors", Think Tanks, and main stream media types to write papers and news stories to create a cult like belief in a type of economic system that is systematically destroying the American economy.

History repeats

From http://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/g9jrx/the_financial_services_industry_has_corrupted_the/c1m012v

History repeats indeed. I saw a TV documentary about the climate debate, and they were investigating the network of interest groups funded by big oil. They drew comparisons between their strategy and the tobacco lobby strategy during that time, and guess what?

Not only were the big oil scientists working like the tobacco scientists, in many cases they were the same actual people. There is, it seems, a few hundred professional mercenary scientists around that will prove whatever you want them to for a price.

[Agnapostate]

Economists are not "right-oriented" in the relative sense of the mainstream political spectrum, as Klein and Stern find in Is There a Free-Market Economist in the House? The Policy Views of American Economic Association Members (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1061797) that, 'People often suppose or imply that free-market economists constitute a significant portion of all economists. We surveyed American Economic Association members and asked their views on 18 specific forms of government activism. We find that about 8 percent of AEA members can be considered supporters of free-market principles, and that less than 3 percent may be called strong supporters. The data are broken down by voting behavior (Democratic or Republican). Even the average Republican AEA member is "middle-of-the-road," not free-market. We offer several possible explanations of the apparent difference between actual and attributed views.'

Since substantial government activism is a necessary criterion of the existence of capitalism, however, that should not be interpreted as an understanding that adherence to liberalism is somehow "anti-capitalist," of course.

[Ocean Seal]

I had a curious experience in my macroeconomics class. We discussed the economic systems: traditional, capitalist, mixed capitalist, and socialist.
However, there were some inherent prejudicial terms:
The socialist economy was called the command (ooh scary) economy
The capitalist economy was called the free-market economy
Consider them both and see which one sounds nicer in your mind.
Command sounds like one being run by a really pissed off general. Free market sounds like a magical place where the people are free to do commerce and no one if forced to do things.
+1 Capitalist Appeal
The book went onto say the command economy doesn't work which is why the US has a greater GDP per capita than China, and that in general countries which use the free market have higher GDP than those which use the command economy
+2 Capitalist Appeal
And of course most hard lining commandists back in the day no longer believe that it actually works and have repented their sins before the great money god. Today there are no commandists as the Great RR vanquished them. (SOME EXAGGERATION PRESENT, okay but the point is that they said that pretty much no one believes in the command economy and that most commandists today believe in the free market) It's not popular and you're wrong if you believe socialism works
+3 Capitalist Appeal
Now our teacher showed us a ppt from the book. Which once again showed the 4 economic systems.
One of the many slides was on Marxism.

I'll outline some of the incorrect points here (which I didn't hesitate to correct my teacher on).



Marx pioneered both authoritarian and democratic socialism (social democracy)
Socialism can be evolutionary (wtf: its called social democracy)
All revolutionary socialism is authoritarian (I think that quite a few comrades here could debate this)
The Soviet Union was a welfare state along with every socialist state that has existed. So all revolutionary socialism results in a huge welfare system.
Under socialism the government controls everything (Oh my George Orwell that sounds scary)

If you didn't know what socialism is, now you know. Its a huge welfare big brother state watching over you which doesn't work and will never rise again because no one believes in it. Did I mention that socialism is wrong?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

There's a reason Marx's Capital is subtitled "A Critique of Political Economy."

[black magick hustla]

i think sometimes people talk about "bourgeois" economics in very weird ways. i dont think all of it is bunk, and i dont think most of it is about justifying capitalism. i remember talking to a friend who is a brilliant econ major and is going to u of chicago soon for his phd and he gave an argument about how post world war ii boom was actually farsical and relied on overprinting of money and how this created a huge bubble that bursted in the 70s. i know shit about economics though, but i am sometimes wary about labeling huge swathes of acadme as brainwashed and misguided. of course they can have shitty political opinions but so do phycisists and sociologists. in fact, most sociology and anthro more or less confirm historical materialism.

[black magick hustla]

about econs calling socialism "command economies". well i think the reason is that the word socialism and communism means to us something different than to the average people. i think its reasonable to say that state capitalism in general is a command economy.

[Jose Gracchus]

But they call this state-capitalism here a "free market economy" or worse "free enterprise economy." In that context, it is shameless propaganda.

[black magick hustla]

i dont think most economists use the term "free market" in that way actually. they call the US a mixed economy. most economists today are post keynesian. most economists are not interested in policy making at all - that is just a fraccion of them. a lot of them are just interested in number crunching and testing weird theoretical models that involve a lot of nasty math

[Kotze]

i remember talking to a friend who is a brilliant econ major and is going to u of chicago soon for his phd and he gave an argument about blahblahblah i know shit about economics though, but i am sometimes wary about labeling huge swathes of acadme as brainwashed and misguided.You say you don't know anything about economics, yet you call somebody brilliant at it. Chicago is on the ultra-right end of the academic spectrum in the US, haven't you heard about the saltwater/freshwater econ distinction? Google it. They push models where government intervention against slumps doesn't work because everybody has brilliant foresight which nullifies these attempts, nevermind that with everybody having brilliant foresight slumps wouldn't exist in the first place.
most economists today are post keynesian.No, google it.

[black magick hustla]

You say you don't know anything about economics, yet you call somebody brilliant at it. Chicago is on the ultra-right end of the academic spectrum in the US, haven't you heard about the saltwater/freshwater econ distinction? Google it. They push models where government intervention against slumps doesn't work because everybody has brilliant foresight which nullifies these attempts, nevermind that with everybody having brilliant foresight slumps wouldn't exist in the first.

:shrugs: i don't really care for the left and right, and its distinctions between state intervention or not. i don't think the state today is capable of managing crisis. second, as i said, most economists are not interested in politics and actually deal with really esoteric mathy shit

[Amphictyonis]

That's the thing, and one fact that we noted (both the teacher and the class) during my HS AP economics courses, is that this field likes to exclude factors and they particular like to do their calculations/charts in ideal "Cēterīs paribus" environments when the reality is never as ideal.

The biggest impression I left with from that course was that the economy was so fragile. Once one aspect starts to fuck up, many other things begin to fuck up (the whole system seems to fuck up) and when you try to do things to reduce inflation or increase spending/employment (i.e. government or monetary policy) always a problem arises. It's like keeping capitalism stable seems like too much of a fucking big hassle why would anyone in their right minds think this is a "perfect" system.

I also learn in economics that full employment is not ideal/necessary in capitalism and full employment won't necessarily happen even in the most optimal circumstances. Suffice to say, by the end of the course I was even more pissed at the system.

Actual full employment means higher wages for workers and no unemployed work force nipping at the employer's feet to work faster and harder (or be replaced). Too much bargaining power for wage slaves if there is no unemployed work force to take their place.

[Red Future]

I always noted in my College the individuals doing economics as a majority tended to be more right wing and conservative, this also applied to the Teachers.

[cyu]

I always noted in my College the individuals doing economics as a majority tended to be more right wing and conservative, this also applied to the Teachers.
From http://www.revleft.com/vb/indoctrination-evili-studying-t126110/index.html?t=126110

economics majors were less likely to donate money to charity than students who majored in other fields. After majors in other fields took an introductory economics course, their propensity to give also fell.

Economists long have studied "free riders," the sort of people who take more than their fair share of something when circumstances permit. Think of the person who orders the most expensive entre at a restaurant, knowing that the check will be shared equally among companions.

University of Wisconsin sociologists Gerald Marwell and Ruth Ames, in a 1981 paper, found that in experiments, economics students showed a much higher propensity to free ride than other students.

The professors also ran an experiment in which participating Cornell undergraduate students could get a higher payoff if they agreed to have their partner get less. Economics majors were more likely to go for the higher payoff, they found.

[cyu]

The socialist economy was called the command (ooh scary) economy
The capitalist economy was called the free-market economy
Consider them both and see which one sounds nicer in your mind.
Command sounds like one being run by a really pissed off general. Free market sounds like a magical place where the people are free to do commerce and no one if forced to do things.

If you didn't know what socialism is, now you know. Its a huge welfare big brother state watching over you which doesn't work and will never rise again because no one believes in it. Did I mention that socialism is wrong?

Indeed. The following focuses primarily on "libertarian" outfits, but applies to many (perhaps most) other economic policy "research" organizations as well. From http://www.revleft.com/vb/economic-calculation-argument-t113038/index.html?t=113038

Well, I really don't see the point in engaging in this debate, insofar as Austrian economics is not so much a serious theory as it is a matter of blind faith, an ideological justification of the market.

In the ancient empires, Mesopotamia and Egypt and Rome, there would always be a class of priests who had the job of thinking up philosophical excuses for why the people should believe that the emperor was a god, etc. In modern capitalist society, this role of apologetics for the status quo of power is performed partly by economics professors. Given the inexcusable fact that society is stratified into the many who produce wealth but don't own it, and the few who own wealth but don't produce it, the high priests' task is to construct edifaces of theory to make it appear as though the inexcusable facts were instead normal and inevitable.

The Austrian professor Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was one such.

There are two ways to study the economy. One is to simply study it. The other is to study it with the explicit goal of trying to protect the privileged position of the wealthy. The second is basically what Austrian economics is all about - it is what the funders of their research organizations pay them for. The problem with this kind of study is that the "science" becomes handcuffed - it is only "allowed" to show results that ultimately favor the wealthy - thus it is no longer a science at all.

The Luwig von Mises institute - the Cato institute ect. are all well funded by large business interests to propagate bourgeois propaganda... the bourgeois utilize pshudeo science for numerous reasons

A. To undermine the possibility of alternative modes of developmement
B. To undermine arguments for increased social expenditure
C. To argue against union activity ect.

I have for a time believed that the core of contemporary bourgeois ideology is to be found in the field of economics - not philosophy ect. Economics is vitally important because it is the main discipline which allows ideology to masquerade itself as an objective science, it allows subjective opinion to present itself as unmitigated fact. In the post scientific era the ruling class hegemony was upheld through religion - now given that truth requires scientific process the upper class are presented with a problem.

They can no longer justify their position via religion nor can they utilize hard science to legitimize their ideology considering it is based upon subjective opinion. Hegemony to be considered legitimate ''cannot'' be presented as subjective - it must be universal law.

Those who control the field of economic theory control the economic base and consequently the superstucture.

It would be wrong to conceptualize these new priests as not having influence. On the contrary, they determine the very culture we live in.

I would argue that the libertarian institutes DO NOT EXIST TO IMPLEMENT SUCH POLICY - they serve as a convinent reference point drawn from when ''proof'' is needed by upper class policy makers as to why social welfare ''causes poverty'' or unions ''cause unemployment'' ect. The proposed aims of these institutes are inconsequential - they the core tools of upper class domination. Whats-more, the assertion that they ''are against monopolies and existing capitalism ect'' is nothing but a diversion, an idealogical protectionary mechanism designed to mask their macro function.

You only need look at the sponsorship records to understand ie. their sponsors would have no interest in a ''free market'' The Koors foundation are large contributers to the Luwig von Mises institute ect. And only an idiot would conceptualize the members of these libertarian institutes as being oblivious to the overall situation.

we must remember that the purpose of libertarian organizations is not to put their ideas into practice, but to produce bourgeois propaganda. The job of libertarians - and the reason they get funded - is to persuade people away from socialism. As such, we must vigorously attack their propaganda, not simply dismiss it as being insane.

It is, as was said by mike, a kind of farce perpetuated by high priests who claim to be objective know-it-alls of how things should be run because they have fancy credentials. They exist to shut down debate when talk of change arises.

[ar734]

I had a curious experience in my macroeconomics class. We discussed the economic systems: traditional, capitalist, mixed capitalist, and socialist.

Good luck, brother!! Don't get discouraged, don't let the bastards get you down.

Eons ago when I was in school I was a mild socialist. It took years to recover from the capitalist propaganda parading as "economics." My advice is to find a group of socialists and, hopefully, some socialist professors and talk it out, discuss Marx, Capital, etc. You can't do it alone.

[castlebravo]

I always noted in my College the individuals doing economics as a majority tended to be more right wing and conservative, this also applied to the Teachers.

i am an economics major. :cool: but yes, it is all capitalist propaganda, luckily it also offers an insight into the internal workings of today's problems.

[ZeroNowhere]

My advice is to find a group of socialists and, hopefully, some socialist professors and talk it out, discuss Marx, Capital, etc. You can't do it alone.I don't think that it's true that you can't do it alone, if alone means 'with books and such only'. That simply depends on who you are (not on how intelligent you are, rather how you are intelligent).