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By Deborah Campbell 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.
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.” One of the
attractions of the math-centric curriculum is that it is easy to teach, says Raveaud: “It leaves you plenty of time for
research.” According to Bernard Guerrien, who
teaches both mathematics and microeconomics at the Sorbonne, “I can guarantee
that teaching math demands the least amount of work. To touch on
reality, however, that’s difficult.” Raveaud believes that the status quo has far-reaching
implications for society. “I think neoclassical theory in particular
and economics in general have managed to get into people’s minds to limit the
domain of possibilities for political action,” he says. “Some people
would say this is unjust; we’ve got to resist. But it’s not only that
it’s unjust. It’s false.” Fellow PAE leader Emmanuelle Benicourt
described his 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.” In 2004, their
ideas took hold. As Guerrien explains,
greater pluralism has come to the Sorbonne. “At our university (the
leading one for economics in France) we have succeeded in cutting back the
programs of micro, macro and mathematics, something that would have been
inconceivable a few years ago. This is in the service of an approach more
open, more multidisciplinary. The ‘orthodox’ have rather easily given
way, having, despite everything, internalized the arguments advanced against
them. In the colloquiums and in the press they have felt obliged to
justify what they do, thereby admitting at least in part the aptness of the
‘anti autistic’ criticisms.” United
Kingdom 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 Ph.D. students,
because if they were unhappy with it, they simply wouldn’t be here. In
fact, that wasn’t the case.” The foundations for
the Cambridge manifesto were laid down by Professor Tony Lawson, a Cambridge
mathematician turned theoretical economist who had established the Cambridge
Workshop in 1990 as a space for critical debate of real-world economic
issues. “The real problem in economics is dogmatism: nothing else is
allowed,” says Lawson, author of Reorienting Economics and Economics and
Reality. “In economics there are a lot of different approaches, but
pick up a textbook and you won’t find any of them mentioned.” Lawson calls the
hegemony of neoclassical views within academia a “closed game”: “Promotion is
the goal, advancement of career, Nobel prizes, fellowships at scientific
academies. They promote each other and they make up the boards.
It’s a self-perpetuating system.” As a mathematician,
Lawson says he is driven by a love of mathematics and concern over seeing it
abused. “I imagine it would be like a violinist seeing a violin used as
a drumstick. It’s not reason to keep the violin out of the orchestra,
but it’s not a drumstick.” He adds, “I don’t want to stop people using
mathematical models, I just want to stop them from stopping everyone doing
anything else.” As expected, Cambridge
ignored the doctoral students’ petition. Their efforts, Faulkner
explains, were primarily intended 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 econonmics 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 K. 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 that is now being translated into
Chinese, and more recently A Guide to What’s Wrong with Economics. He
notes that 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, an associate professor of
economics at the University of Western Sydney and the author of Debunking
Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences. In 1973, Keen led
a student rebellion that resulted in 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.” Despite the student
revolt, 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 during a
conference in Kansas City. 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, José 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 outside the Department. An Economics Department 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.” He considers that
the Harvard economics department refused to sponsor the new course because
“they believe that economics is like physics, it’s like a science [in that]
there is a correct version and there is no room for dispute about what the
fundamentals are anymore than you would countenance an alternative physics
course.” It has often been said that the field of economics suffers from
“physics-envy” – the desire to view itself as a hard science rather than the
social science that it actually is. 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 economía es de gente, no de curvas!” –
“Economics is about people, not curves!” Deborah
Campbell is the author of This Heated Place, a literary exploration of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and an associate editor at Adbusters
magazine. A version of this article has been translated for inclusion
in the Chinese edition of The Crisis in Economics and
will appear in a German book on economics. |