|
post-autistic
economics review |
|
issue 27
contents
PAE
Review index
home page |
|
PAE in the News: Post-Autistic Economics:
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.”
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.”
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!”
______________________________ |
|
|