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Now and then we have two (or even more) threads on the same subject at Che-Lives.
The emergence of "Post-Autistic Economics" is the subject of a new thread in the Theory forum...and I thought it would be interesting to see how our resident defenders of neo-classical economics might react.
The following was originally posted by wet blanket today (September 11th).
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Post-Autistic Economics:
What economics students in three countries are doing to put their professors on the defensive
by Deborah Campbell
France
The university-aged children of France’s ruling class ought to have been contentedly biding their time. They were, after all, destined to move into the high-powered positions reserved for graduates of the elite École Normale Supérieure (ENS). "The ENS is for the very good students, and the very good students aren’t afraid to ask questions," says Sorbonne economist Bernard Geurrien.
In Spring 2000 he addressed a conference on the disconnect between mainstream neoclassical economics instruction and reality. Economics has an ideological function, he told them, to put forth the idea that the markets will resolve everything. In fact, he added, economic theory absolutely doesn’t show that.
A group of economics students, their worst fears confirmed, approached Guerrien eager to "do something." A week later, 15 of them gathered in a classroom to hash out a plan of attack. Someone called the reigning neoclassical dogma "autistic!" The analogy would stick: like sufferers of autism, the field of economics was intelligent but obsessive, narrowly focussed, and cut off from the outside world.
By June, their outrage had coalesced into a petition signed by hundreds of students demanding reform within economics teaching, which they said had become enthralled with complex mathematical models that only operate in conditions that don’t exist. "We wish to escape from imaginary worlds!" they declared. Networking through the internet and reaching the media through powerful family connections, they made their case.
"Call to teachers: wake up before it’s too late!" they demanded. "We no longer want to have this autistic science imposed on us." They decried an excessive reliance on mathematics "as an end in itself," and called for a plurality of approaches.
With that, 'autisme-économie,’ the post-autistic economics (PAE) movement, was born.
Their revolutionary arguments created an earthquake in the French media, beginning with a report in Le Monde that sent a chill through the academic establishment. Several prominent economists voiced support and a professors’ petition followed. The French government, no doubt recalling the revolutionary moment of May 1968, when students led a 10-day general strike that rocked the republic to its foundations, promptly set up a special commission to investigate. It was headed by leading economist Jean-Paul Fitoussi, who also traveled to Madrid to address Spain’s nascent "post-autistic" student movement. Fitoussi’s findings: the rebels had a cause. Most important to the PAE, Fitoussi agreed to propose new courses oriented to "the big problems" being ignored by mainstream economics: unemployment, the economy and the environment.
A backlash was inevitable. Several economists (notably the American Robert Solow from MIT), launched a return volley. What followed was an attempt to discredit the PAE by implying that the students were anti-intellectuals opposed to the "scientificity" of neoclassical economics. The accusations didn’t stick: the dissenters were top students who had done the math and found it didn’t add up.
Gilles Raveaud, a key PAE student leader, along with Emmanuelle Benicourt and Iona Marinescu, sees today’s faith in neoclassical economics as "an intellectual game" that, like Marxism and the Bible, purports to explain everything, rather than admitting there are many issues it hasn’t figured out. "We’ve lost religion," says Raveaud, "so we’ve got something else to give meaning to our lives."
Benicourt described her hope for PAE as follows: "We hope it will trigger concrete transformations of the way economics is taught...We believe that understanding real-world economic phenomena is enormously important to the future well-being of humankind, but that the current narrow, antiquated and naive approaches to economics and economics teaching make this understanding impossible. We therefore hold it to be extremely important, both ethically and economically, that reforms like the ones we have proposed are, in the years to come, carried through, not just in France, but throughout the world."
United Kingdom
Raveaud and Marinescu, key French PAE student leaders, visited the Cambridge Workshop on Realism and Economics in the UK. "It must have been the right time," says Phil Faulkner, a PhD student at Cambridge University. That June he and 26 other disgruntled PhD students issued their own reform manifesto, called "Opening Up Economics," that soon attracted 750 signatures. Economics students at Oxford University, who had been at the same workshop, followed with their own "post-autistic" manifesto and website. Similar groups linked to heterodox (as opposed to orthodox) economics began emerging elsewhere in Europe and South America.
The Cambridge rebellion "was prompted by frustration," says Faulkner, but they hadn’t expected such a positive reception from fellow students. "If anyone were to be happy about the way economics had gone, we’d expect it to be PhD students, because if they were unhappy with it, they simply wouldn’t be here. In fact, that wasn’t the case."
As expected, Cambridge ignored them. Their efforts, Faulkner explains, were meant to show support for the French students and to use their privileged position at the esteemed economics department to demonstrate to the rest of the world their discontent. Some of the signatories worried that speaking out could have dire consequences, and the original letter was unsigned. "I think it’s more future possibilities, getting jobs, etc., that [made them think] it might not be smart to be associated with this stuff," says Faulkner. He says he already knew that his research interests meant he would have to work outside of the mainstream: "There was nothing to lose really."
Edward Fullbrook, a research fellow at the University of the West of England, had already launched the first post-autistic economics newsletter in September 2000. Inspired by the French student revolt and outraged by stories emerging from American campuses that courses on the history of economic thought were being eradicated (which he viewed as an effort to facilitate complete indoctrination of students), Fullbrook battled hate mail and virus attacks to get the newsletter off the ground. Soon, prominent economists such as James Galbraith stepped up to offer encouragement and hard copy. The subscriber list ballooned from several dozen to 7,500 around the world.
Fullbrook edited The Crisis in Economics, a book based on PAE contributions, now being translated into Chinese. Textbook publishers, always hunting for the next big thing, have been inquiring about PAE textbooks. It makes sense, says Fullbrook, since enrollments in standard economics classes have been dropping, cutting into textbook revenues. In other words, students just aren’t buying it. Ironically, says Fullbrook, "Market forces are working against neoclassical economics."
One of his contributors is Australian economist Steve Keen, who led a student rebellion in 1973 that led to the formation of the political economy department at Sydney University. "Neoclassical economics has become a religion," says Keen. "Because it has a mathematical veneer, and I emphasize the word veneer, they actually believe it’s true. Once you believe something is true, you’re locked into its way of thinking unless there’s something that can break in from the outside and destroy that confidence."
But the neoclassical model still reigns supreme at Cambridge. Phil Faulkner now teaches at a university college, but is limited to mainstream economics, the only game in town. "If you’re into math, it’s a fun thing to do," he says. "It’s little problems, little puzzles, so it’s an enjoyable occupation. But I don’t think it’s insightful. I don’t think it tells these kids about the things it claims to describe, markets or individuals."
United States
Sitting in an overcrowded café near Harvard Square, talking over the din of full-volume Fleetwood Mac and espresso fueled chatter, Gabe Katsh describes his disillusionment with economics teaching at Harvard University. The red-haired 21-year-old makes it clear that not all of Harvard’s elite student body, who pay close to $40,000 a year, are the "rationally" self-interested beings that Harvard’s most influential economics course pegs them as.
"I was disgusted with the way ideas were being presented in this class and I saw it as hypocritical -- given that Harvard values critical thinking and the free marketplace of ideas -- that they were then having this course which was extremely doctrinaire," says Katsh. "It only presented one side of the story when there are obviously others to be presented."
For two decades, Harvard’s introductory economics class has been dominated by one man: Martin Feldstein. It was a New York Times article on Feldstein titled "Scholarly Mentor To Bush’s Team," that lit the fire under the Harvard activist. Calling the Bush economic team a "Feldstein alumni club," the article declared that he had "built an empire of influence that is probably unmatched in his field." Not only that, but thousands of Harvard students "who have taken his, and only his, economics class during their Harvard years have gone on to become policy-makers and corporate executives," the article noted. "I really like it; I’ve been doing it for 18 years," Feldstein told the Times. "I think it changes the way they see the world."
That’s exactly Katsh’s problem. As a freshman, he’d taken Ec 10, Feldstein’s course. "I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that Ec 10 presents itself as politically neutral, presents itself as a science, but really espouses a conservative political agenda and the ideas of this professor, who is a former Reagan advisor, and who is unabashedly Republican," he says. "I don’t think I’m alone in wanting a class that presents a balanced viewpoint and is not trying to cover up its conservative political bias with economic jargon."
In his first year at Harvard, Katsh joined a student campaign to bring a living wage to Harvard support staff. Fellow students were sympathetic, but many said they couldn’t support the campaign because, as they’d learned in Ec 10, raising wages would increase unemployment and hurt those it was designed to help. During a three-week sit-in at the Harvard president’s office, students succeeded in raising workers’ wages, though not to "living wage" standards.
After the living wage ‘victory’, Harvard activists from Students for a Humane and Responsible Economics (SHARE) decided to stage an intervention. This time, they went after the source, leafleting Ec 10 classes with alternative readings. For a lecture on corporations, they handed out articles on corporate fraud. For a free trade lecture, they dispensed critiques of the WTO and IMF. Later, they issued a manifesto reminiscent of the French post-autistic revolt, and petitioned for an alternative class. Armed with 800 signatures, they appealed for a critical alternative to Ec 10. Turned down flat, they succeeded in introducing the course outside the economics department.
Their actions follow on the Kansas City Proposal, an open letter to economics departments "in agreement with and in support of the Post-Autistic Economics Movement and the Cambridge Proposal" that was signed by economics students and academics from 22 countries.
Harvard President Lawrence Summers illustrates the kind of thinking that emerges from neoclassical economics. Summers is the same former chief economist of the World Bank who sparked international outrage after his infamous memo advocating pollution trading was leaked in the early 1990s. "Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCS [Less Developed Countries]?" the memo inquired. "I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that ...I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted..."
Brazil’s then-Secretary of the Environment, Jose Lutzenburger, replied: "Your reasoning is perfectly logical but totally insane...Your thoughts [provide] a concrete example of the unbelievable alienation, reductionist thinking, social ruthlessness and the arrogant ignorance of many conventional ‘economists’ concerning the nature of the world we live in."
Summers later claimed the memo was intended ironically, while reports suggested it was written by an aide. In any case, Summers devoted his 2003/2004 prayer address at Harvard to a "moral" defense of sweatshop labor, calling it the "best alternative" for workers in low-wage countries.
"You can’t ignore the academic foundations for what’s going on in politics," says Jessie Marglin, a Harvard sophomore with SHARE. SHARE didn’t want a liberal class with its own hegemony of ideas. It wanted "a critical class in which you have all the perspectives rather than just that of the right." Without an academic basis for criticism, other approaches "aren’t legitimized by the institution," she says. "It becomes their word versus Professor Feldstein, who is very powerful."
Harvard economics professor Stephen Marglin, Jessie’s father, teaches the new course. A faculty member since 1967, Marglin was the tail end of a generation formed by the Great Depression and World War II. "This generation," he says, "believed that in some cases markets could be the solution, but that markets could also be the problem."
His new course still uses the Ec 10 textbook, but includes a critical evaluation of the underlying assumptions. Marglin wants to provide balance, rather than bias. "I’m trying to provide ammunition for people to question what it is about this economic [system] that makes them want to go out in the streets to protest it," he says. "I’m responding in part to what’s going on and I think the post-autistic economics group is responding to that. Economics doesn’t lead politics, it follows politics. Until there is a broadening of the political spectrum beyond a protest in Seattle or a protest in Washington, there will not be a broader economics. People like me can plant a few seeds but those seeds won’t germinate until the conditions are a lot more suitable."
The revolution is spreading. A slogan emblazoned on a wall on a Madrid campus, where the PAE movement has been making inroads, makes its case: "¡La economia es de gente, no de curvas!" -- "Economics is about people, not curves!"
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http://www.paecon.net/
The Redstar2000 Papers
A site about communist ideas
No thoughts on this cappies?
The Human Progress Group
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Check out my speculative fiction project: NOVA MUNDI
Mainstream economics ignores the ECONOMY!?! no wonder things are so messed up.
Political standing:
Economic Left/Right: -5.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.87
"To think outside the box you must realize that there is NO box."
"Think about why you think the way you think, before you actually think about anything else."
"The most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."
Any chance of us reading these supposed refuations ?
Von Mises has never been refuted and I very much doubt these people, obviously driven by anti-capitalism rather than any sound knowledge of economics, know what they're talking about.
I guess not, looking at the above post
"How you cling to your purity, young man! How afraid you are to soil your hands! All right, stay pure! What good will it do? Why did you join us? Purity is an idea for a yogi or a monk. You intellectuals and Bourgeois anarchists use it as a pretext for doing nothing. To do nothing, to remain motionless, arms at your sides, wearing kids gloves. Well, I have dirty hands. Right up to the elbows. I've plunged them in the filth and blood. But what do you hope? Do you think you'll govern innocently?"-Jean-Paul Sartre
Well in your mind their haven't and never will because you have chosen to view Mises as the greatest. No attempt would change your mind am sure. Just as with the Aynd Rand cult.
In Defence Of Marxism
Hands Off Venezuela
An idiot can ask so many questions it will take years to reply. So if I don't reply to your posts it's probably why
Out of your depth, eh Moneybags?
I can't really blame you; as an economist, I'd make a terrific cab-driver myself.
But I did get the point that you missed: it's not a matter of "refuting" Von Mises -- what these people are saying is that Von Mises does not describe the real world.
As a "mathematical construct", neo-classical economics may indeed be "brilliant" (I confess that I am unqualified to say).
But of the set of all coherent mathematical constructs, only some of them apply to the real world. And neo-classical economics is not one of them.
As to whether or not "they know what they're talking about", please remember that they are not a bunch of kids on a message board. They are (or at least may be) the "best and brightest" students of bourgeois economics to be found anywhere.
They're not students at Shitkicker Community College in Pisspot, Arkansas -- they are players in the academic "major leagues".
Something you might want to consider.
The Redstar2000 Papers
A site about communist ideas
I think if I had pursued my economics education in France instead of Florida I would've ended up mixed up in this movement.
This was the problem I always had with what my professors were trying to teach us; they could draw pretty flawless models(as long as they assumed away enough variables) but it meant nothing in the real world. Classic example is Ricardian Equivalence. This guy named Barro is a big fan of it and one of my professors was a fan of Barro's; so he drew us a beautiful model of why, when the government lowers taxes and engages in deficit spending, people increase savings in anticipation of the higher future taxes that will result. It was mathematically sound and a very compelling model. When I asked him about whether data from the real world is consistent with the results of the model he said, "Not really."
The sad truth is that economists spend too many times trying to mathematically justify the way they think things should be instead of exploring why they are the way they are.
"We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard the revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish the dictatorship." - George Owell, 1984
"I read all about the scourging and the crowning with thorns, and I could viddy myself helping in and even taking charge of the tolchocking and the nailing in, being dressed in the height of Roman fashion. I didn't so much like the latter part of the book, which is more like all preachy talking than fighting and the old in-out. I liked the parts where these old yahoodies tolchock each other and then drink their Hebrew vino, and getting into the bed with their wives' handmaidens. That kept me going."
He just sucessfully predicted the collapse of socialism and explained why it was unsustainable. That sounds like the real world to me.
It doesn't make any difference- the burden of proof is on them. It's not like neo-classical economics is being put into practice anyway, so how they can claim it's not working is something of a mystery.
Such the Harvard degree factory ? Don't make me laugh.
Turned you down, did they?
The Redstar2000 Papers
A site about communist ideas
Alot of other people predicted the collapse of USSR and the rest from another standpoint, so what's your point really?
The problem for neo-classical economy is that it always comes up against the real world. The models look good but when put into practive they spur extreme discontent. Because the biggest effect of them is a widening gap between rich and poor.
In Defence Of Marxism
Hands Off Venezuela
An idiot can ask so many questions it will take years to reply. So if I don't reply to your posts it's probably why
I agree with these students.
Btw, you cannot discredit Austrians simply because they are allergic for maths. However, it would be fun to watch some of you look at the maths behind market-socialism, just as farfetched as neoclassic equilibrium models.
Inter pedes puellarum magna voluptas puerorum est
Or even worse!
PARECON--Welcome Back to Class Society; A Good Critique of a BAD idea.
"Market socialism" is an oxymoron perpetuated by morons.
The Redstar2000 Papers
A site about communist ideas
I'm rather confused which I'm sure is no suprise, as to how they propose the teaching of an economy, based in and on the real world, is to be done. If you can't or don't feel like filling me in, don't worry i'll keep reading, and eventually concepts will stop flying over my head.
As an Anarchist, I strangely find myself getting along better with Maoists than Platformists!
I'm rather confused which I'm sure is no suprise, as to how they propose the teaching of an economy, based in and on the real world, is to be done. If you can't or don't feel like filling me in, don't worry i'll keep reading, and eventually concepts will stop flying over my head.
As an Anarchist, I strangely find myself getting along better with Maoists than Platformists!
I'm rather confused which I'm sure is no suprise, as to how they propose the teaching of an economy, based in and on the real world, is to be done. If you can't or don't feel like filling me in, don't worry i'll keep reading, and eventually concepts will stop flying over my head.
As an Anarchist, I strangely find myself getting along better with Maoists than Platformists!
Redstar2000, in one of your responses you stated that you where “unqualified” to comment on the neo-classical school of economics. Let me assure you are not alone in your broad ignorance of economics, you are joined by the responses of your fellow “communists”
Allow me to educate you, to demonstrate that something is false or erroneous is the definition of the word refute. The problem is stating something does not make it so, where is the evidence? This is typical Communist approach to debate, rather then attempting to understand the substance of the argument, you simply dismiss it out right without ever reading any of it. In the example of this article on PAE Von Mises isn’t mentioned.
If you had bothered to read Ludwig Von Mises, F. A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt or Murray N. Rothbard, you would have known that they are not neo-classical economists. All of these men represent the Austrian school of economics. I suppose you will have to search for an article about disgruntled students complaining that the Austrians don’t use enough mathematical models. Good luck most professors simply pretend the Austrian school does not exist, rather then deal with its challenge to neoclassical school of economics.
Collectivists have learned from neoclassical approach, Mises challenge to socialism still stands unanswered eighty years later, because it is simply ignored. Mises pointed out under a scheme not permitting exchange in capital goods or private property, there is no way for resources to find their most highly valued use. He challenged the Collectivists to explain, precisely how their system would work. It’s a challenge that not only you RedStar2000 but generations of communists have avoided answering, because you cannot.
What is this, Communist elitism? A student may choose to attend a community college because of financial or personal reasons. Revealing that you would choose to disparage their intellectual ability.
As to whether the Kids in the PAE know what they are talking about, the answer is decidedly no. I first heard this story months ago when a friend emailed me the link to their website. The first thing that struck me was how much of a non-story all of this was. The real headline here should read “Liberal students disgruntled!” Hardly front page news.
PAE is not a school of economics, like Marxism or The Monetarists, nor is it a critique of the neoclassical school in its entirety. It is really a muddled critique of Economics education, which involves two main thrusts.
One being ensuring a diversity of viewpoints in the classroom because of the “rigidity of the neoclassical dogma” To this end they champion teaching, Feminist economics, Post Marxian perspectives, market socialism, post-Keynesian economics, Social Economics, Postmodern economics, and Evolutionary economics. Hardly schools that are free of “rigid dogma”, in fact the common thread in all of these perspectives is the need for greater government intrusion in the economic realm then can be justified via the neoclassical school. Thus the Austrian school & the Public Choice schools are once again ignored, because the point is advocacy not diversity of thought.
The second PAE beef with econ classes is the lack of focus on externalities that arise as a result of economic transactions, the biggest of these being the environmental impact. Their solutions boil down to increasing regulation and redistribution of recourses by the government. Of course this is not surprising but the irony is that they justify this via the law of diminishing marginal utility! So much for their allergy to neoclassical methods of analyses, it is only their inability justify out right socialism that they bemoan.
The sheer irony of you Redstar2000 and your fellow communists struggling to comprehend what the PAE movement was, compelled me to post. You pronounce communism as a viable economic model upon witch build society so much so that you advocate “revolution” yet your grasp of economics is tenuous at best. No matter, post revolution central authorities shall do all the thinking anyway.
free·dom:
Pronunciation: 'frE-dom
1 : the absence of coercion, or constraint in choice or action
Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito
"Most highly valued use?" An "idea" even fuzzier than the labor theory of value.
If you simply look around you, von Mises' assertion is absurd on its face...probably why it is ignored by people who know far more economics than I do.
In fact, even someone as ignorant of economics as myself can easily see that a concept like "most highly valued use" is a social construct and has no real world meaning whatsoever.
It boils down, in a real world sense, to a simple declaration:
I'm rich...and therefore my luxuries take precedence over your necessities.
A centrally planned economy, if competently operated, would presumably operate on the basis of necessities for everyone before luxuries for anyone.
That's socialism, of course...and not relevant to communism at all.
Oh come on...even I have ventured into the murky waters of speculation on how communist economics might work.
And, of course, the USSR and China have furnished some lessons -- positive and negative -- on how socialism works and could work better.
As you know, I'm not a socialist, but others here are...and they talk a lot about this stuff.
No...it is a simple recognition of the practical elitism so characteristic of your capitalist educational (and all other) institutions.
If those economics students had come from Shitkicker Community College, you and your co-thinkers would have ignored them completely. What's embarrassing to you is that they come from your "very best schools".
Then why don't you argue with them?
Perhaps your knowledge of economics is "not up to it"?
Are they all "liberals"?
Or just not members of the Ayn Rand cult?
Well mine is...I've admitted that often enough.
I'm sure that there are and will be communist economists who will do a much better job on this stuff than I ever could.
But no matter how tenuous my grasp of economics might be, I have sufficient common sense to see the brazen self-interest behind your own views.
It sticks out like a skyscraper behind an outhouse.
Listen to the worm of doubt for it speaks truth.
The Redstar2000 Papers
Also see this NEW SITE:@nti-dialectics
False, the burdon of proof is upon those who agree with these economic ideals to prove that they would work in a practical enviroment, ie reality.
Like with al major new theories, it is the position of those who with to promote the theory to prove its relevance and worth. Not the job of the rest of the academic community to disprove it.
The burdon of proof lies completely on your shoulders (and those who agree wit you) to prove that your ideals will work in a practical manner.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
- Hanlon's Razor
fuck em, there just a bunch of whiney liberals , good thing they are in france we dont want them here.
