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A Brief History of the Post-Autistic Economics Movement
August 2002
Edward Fullbrook (University of the West
of England, UK)
Autisme-économie
In France in June 2000 a
group of economics students published a petition on the web protesting against:
- the lack of realism in economics teaching;
- economics’ "uncontrolled use" and treatment of
mathematics as "an end in itself", with the result that
economics has become an "autistic science", lost in “imaginary
worlds”;
- the repressive domination of neoclassical theory and approaches
derivative from it in the university economics curriculum; and
- the dogmatic teaching style in economics, which leaves no place
for critical and reflective thought.
The French students’ petition
argued in favor of:
- engagement with empirical and concrete economic realities,
- prioritizing science over scientism,
- a pluralism of approaches adapted to the complexity of economic
objects and to the uncertainty surrounding most of the big economic
questions, and
- their professors initiating reforms to rescue economics from its
autistic and socially irresponsible state.
The students’ petition carried great
weight because its authors and initial signatories were associated with
France’s “Grandes Ecoles”,
whose enormous academic prestige and selectivity surpasses that of other
higher education institutions in France.
No one dared say that these students, the crème de la crème, opposed
the formalist approach to economics because the mathematics was too difficult
for them Thus from the outset
defenders of the status quo were deprived of their favorite
argumentative gambit.
Meanwhile some economics teachers in
France responded with a petition of their own, supporting the students’
demands, adding to their analysis, and lamenting the cult of scientism into
which economics in the main had descended. The professors’ petition also
called for the opening of a public debate on the state of economics and
economics teaching.
That debate began on the 21st
of June, when the French newspaper, Le Monde,
reported on the students’ movement, soon to call itself Autisme-économie,
and interviewed several prominent economists who voiced sympathy for the
students’ cause. Other newspapers and magazines followed suit. As the French
media, including radio and television, expanded the public debate, student
and teacher fears of persecution if they took a public stand diminished and
the number of signatories to the petitions increased. This fuelled further
media interest. Jack Lang, the French Minister of Education, announced that
he regarded the complaints with great seriousness and was setting up a
commission to investigate. He put the venerable Jean-Paul Fitoussi,
president of the l'Observatoire français
des conjonctures économiques
(OFCE), in charge and instructed him to report
within a year.
The movement in France now
entered a new stage, as it sought to capitalize on its official recognition
and expand the public debate.
Meanwhile, news of the recent events was beginning to reach the rest
of the world.
The post-autistic
economics newsletter / review
The first issue of the post-autistic
economics newsletter appeared in September 2000. It arose out of a conversation the previous
month at the World Congress of Social Economics at Cambridge in the UK. Benjamin Balak,
then a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
told me that some distinguished American universities were eliminating, even
as an elective, the history of economic thought from the curriculum, the idea
being that the total absence of competing ideas would facilitate students’
indoctrination into neoclassicalism. I was incredulous. It seemed too much to believe that the
closing down of the horizons of economic enquiry could have gone so far. But a quick check with other conferees not
only confirmed Balak’s account but also turned up
economists faced with redundancy in consequence of this new narrowing of
vision.
Attempts to interest people
at the conference in organizing a spirited response, however, came to
nothing. The general view was that
such a project, no matter how important, stood no chance of success. Sure, economists who either do not
subscribe to the neoclassical model or who reject the anti-scientific
fundamentalism that surrounds it constitute a sizable and growing
minority. But no means existed for
mobilizing them as a community.
Dissenters survived only as isolated, worried and often persecuted
individuals or as members of numerous competing heterodox groups, each
zealously guarding their mailing lists against the others. And no one at the Cambridge conference
seemed to have heard of the events earlier in the summer in France. My mention of them to a few people appeared
to leave them wondering if they were talking to a fantasist.
If it had not been for
Geoff Harcourt that probably would have been the end of my involvement. But, in his after dinner speech at the
conference banquet, the old warrior, still fighting and still hilarious,
raised spirits with laugher that rattled the timbers of the medieval dining
hall. The next day, still buoyed by
his performance and returning home on the train to the west of England, I
pondered the possibilities for constructive rebellion. Somehow the success and hope of the French
students had to be communicated to economists of conscience throughout the
world.
The students had a website
“Autisme-économie” packed with documents, newspaper
articles and information. With this to
draw on, compiling a journalistic account of their exploits and public
reactions proved both easy and fun.
But what to do with it? Even if
my effort had been accepted in some form by a quality newspaper, it would
still largely miss the target audience.
Sending it, then just a Word file named “post-autistic economics”, out
as an electronic newsletter occurred to me as a possibility. Sending it anonymously, giving it an
element of mystery, could conceivably spark enough interest for a second
issue that would include translations of the French students’ and teachers’
petitions. It was really these that I
thought people should read.
A week passed before I set
up an anonymous account with Hotmail, formatted the document as a newsletter,
put in pleas for subscribers and for readers to forward the newsletter to
potentially interested colleagues, and then emailed it to 99 people. 90 seconds later the newsletter had its
first subscriber, Frank Ackerman. 40
seconds after that, its second, Paul Ormerod, and
so on until at the end of the first week there were 209. The following email message also arrived
from Olivier Vaury, one of the founders of Autisme-économie:
“I just now got back to Paris. Who are you? What country are you in? What is your organization? What do you want?” This and other messages suggested that the
mystery element was working.
But after the first week,
uptake fell off: 128 new subscribers in the second week, 57 in the third, and
67 in the fourth. The second issue on
October 3 failed to regain the initial momentum and likewise the third at the
end of November. Furthermore, generating copy was becoming
problematic and the project was taking up too much time. And then there was the hate mail, some of
it quite nasty and not the ideal way to start the day, and, worst of all, the
viruses that were being targeted at PAE News. So after the third issue I decided the next
would be the last. But when my
partner, Kate Fullbrook, heard this she implored me
to persevere for a few more issues just to see what developed. “The neoclassicalists”,
she reasoned, “wouldn’t be spending their time sending you viruses and hate
mail if they didn’t see the newsletter as a serious threat.”
About this time Joseph Halevi gallantly stepped forward to help out with advice,
encouragement and hard copy. So too
did James Galbraith. And the French students
were proving marvelous to work with, especially
Gilles Raveaud.
These associations were a real turning point as they raised the
possibility of developing the newsletter into a review with very fast
publication of articles received. And,
although February 2001 saw only 59 new subscribers, this pushed the total
past the 1000 mark. In mid-March,
issue number 5 came out featuring six contributors, and in the months that
followed circulation grew very rapidly.
Today (19 August 2002) the post-autistic economics review
has 5500 subscribers.
Fitoussi’s Report
Meanwhile in France the
movement grew in stature and influence.
In the beginning the neoclassical mainstream had chosen to ignore the
demands and analysis of French economics students and academics. But by autumn 2000 it became clear that in
France the call for reform was not about to go away. In October Le Monde
carried in one issue three pages of articles on the movement, including an
ambiguous interview with Amartya Sen. It was about
this time that the traditionalists changed tactics and launched a
counterattack. It included a long
article by Robert Solow in Le Monde, another by Olivier Blanchard, the chair at
MIT, and the publication of a counter-petition – a plea for the status quo.
These mainstream initiatives, however, backfired. Solow’s article
came across as imperialistic and condescending, while the petition, which was
mainly an MIT affair, left observers shocked by its cynical misrepresentation
of the students’ demands. Most of all,
however, people on all sides seemed surprised at how feeble were the
arguments offered for blocking the reforms proposed by the French
students.
Meanwhile the Autisme-économie students, led by Gilles Raveaud, Olivier Vaury, Ioana Marinescu
and Emmanuelle Benicourt, organized public debates on the issues they had raised in
their petition. Through the winter and
spring these well-attended events took place at universities all over France,
the debate at Nanterre on April 10th attracting
more than 400 people.
Articles continued to
appear in the French press regarding the issues raised by the movement. In
February 2001 L’économie politique devoted an entire issue to the debate. In
articles and interviews in the French national press, various French economists
of note, including Bernard Paulré, Olivier Favereau,
Yann Moulier-Boutang, Jean Gadrey, and
André Orléan, came out on the side of the
students. Over 200 French academic
economists signed the petition of support.
In November 2000 www.paecon.net was launched to give
international direction to what had become known as the Post-Autistic
Economics Movement and which by now was receiving media attention around the
world. At the beginning of December, Gilles Raveaud
and Ioana Marinescu,
appeared in a roundtable “The Future of Economics” at an international
conference in Leeds, UK. This event
forged important links between the movement in France and emergent
initiatives elsewhere. At about the
same time James Galbraith flew to Paris to meet with student and academic
leaders of the new movement. In January 2001, Galbraith replied to Solow in the fourth issue of the post-autistic
economics newsletter.
The
French students re-designed
and re-launched their website (http://mouv.eco.free.fr) in both French
and English. Meanwhile other PAE-related websites were springing up in various
countries. These included one created
in the UK by Oxford University students, which came about following an
appearance by Raveaud and Marinescu
at the Cambridge Workshop on Realism and Economics.
Throughout the academic
year (2000-2001), Fitoussi’s commission was
intensely lobbied. This included a special spring visit to Paris by members
of the Executive Committee of the International Economics Association. Big guns and bold manoeuvers
were called for, because it was perceived by both sides that success by the
French reformers would, in all likelihood, have effects far beyond the French
borders. Concessions won there would,
in time, be demanded in other countries, not just by other students, but also
by the thousands of academic economists whose fidelity to the neoclassical
mainstream is more survivalist than intellectual.
In June 2001 “the Cambridge-27”,
27 embattled economics PhD students at Cambridge University, published their
petition “Opening Up Economics”. By
“opening up economics” they mean becoming mindful of the limitations of the “competing approaches to understanding
economic phenomena”, of “learning
their domain of applicability”, and of using “the best methods for the
question at hand” rather than “restricting research done in economics to that
based on one approach only.” Their
petition soon had 500 signatures. In
September 2001 a cognate petition appeared, that resulted from a meeting of
75 students, researchers and professors from twenty-two nations who gathered
in Kansas City for a week of discussion on the state of economics.
People expecting Fitoussi’s report to be a whitewash were surprised when
it was released in September. It
proposed enough reforms to win the support of Autisme–économie. And
enough for Jack Lang to speak of fundamental reforms which he has promised to
carry through.
Fitoussi’s report, L'Enseignement
supérieur des sciences 'économiques
en question, calls for two fundamental changes in the teaching of
economics.1 Firstly, it calls for the integration of debate on
contemporary economic issues into both the structure and content of
university economics courses. It means
real debate, not neoclassical opinion presented on its own or with only token
alternatives. Such an open environment
would preclude the standard practice of keeping the ideological content of
neoclassicism hidden from students. This
change alone would radically transform economics teaching, with inevitable
and incalculable effects to economics itself.
Secondly, Fitoussi’s report demands that multidisciplinarity be placed at the heart of the
teaching of economics. Economics
students will be required to study cognate disciplines, such as sociology,
history, law, psychology, etc., so as to become familiar with their
contrasting views of and methods of treating social-economic phenomena.
By now over 100 articles
have appeared in the French press about the crisis in economics and the
efforts to reform it. As this book goes to press, the PAE
debate is now also receiving increasing media attention in other
countries. Here are a few extracts
from international press coverage of the movement.
The bonfire of revolution
has become so bad that the French education minister, Mr. Lang, has ordered a
commission to investigate." The Melbourne Age (Australia)
"A movement has begun calling for post-autistic economics. . . If there
is a daily prayer for the global economy, it should be "deliver us from
the abstraction". The Independent (UK)
"the Post-Autistic Economics Movement . . . has spread like wildfire
among students in France and Spain, with growing numbers of correspondents in
other countries as well." Science and Society (USA)
"The battle lines are being drawn, and www.paecon.net is
the site for much of the action." The Australian
The PAE movement is drawing praise from
anti-globalization activists and thinkers. Writing in The Independent,
Andrew Simms of the United Kingdom-based New Economics Foundation hails the PAE movement as part of an effort to make "the
mandarins of the global economy experience a reality check" and protect
the environment. The movement's Web site and its e-journal, the Post-Autistic
Economics Newsletter (published every one or two months), showcase PAE's specific critiques of mainstream economics as well
as the movement's growing influence. Foreign Policy
(USA)
"the
"post-autistic economics" (PAE) movement,
an academic backlash against traditional economics that is rapidly gaining
adherents among disaffected practitioners of the dismal science in developing
and advanced economies." Foreign Policy Magazine (USA)
“This
[PAE] protest is three-fold: economics as it is
taught is completely detached from the “world out there”, . . . . economic
teaching . . . makes an excessive use of maths . . . . and economic teaching
is monolithic. It does not present the variety of past and present
theories.” Arena (Sweden)
"in France, a "post-autistic economics" movement
erupted in protest against the excesses of formal economics discourses. . .
The movement quickly spread to Spain and across much of continental Europe,
and is making inroads in the UK." The Guardian (UK)
"Paris has become the birthplace of a revolt against the
pre-eminence of theory over practice, of economic abstraction over reality,
and statistics over real life. Called "post-autistic economics" . .
. the movement has had a worldwide impact, with Cambridge students drawing up
their own petition." New
Statesman
(UK)
”the PAE movement
comes at a time of reaction to globalisation and the power of the corporation
. . .[and to economists’] continuing loss of students and their increasingly
fragile position within the business school.”
Arena
Magazine, February 2002,
(Australia)
"The
second issue already had readers in 36 countries, today the Post-Autistic
Economics Review has 5,000 (non-paying) subscribers in one hundred
countries." De Morgen (Brussels)
“In
September 2000 the first internet edition of the post-autistic economics
newsletter appeared, which spread news of the movement to students,
assistant professors and professors throughout the world. Further editions of the newsletter,
alongside the Post-Autistic Economics Network website (www.paecon.net ), have founded a strong
platform for discussion.” Süddeutsche Zeitung
(Munich)
Tomorrow
Economics has not
experienced such pressure to change since the 1930s. Then the complaint was its inability to
explain the Great Depression and to effect a recovery. It responded by inventing macroeconomics. Today, the indictment is both more general
and more serious: economics as taught in universities neither explains
contemporary reality nor provides a framework for the critical debate of
issues in democratic societies.
One of the founders of Autisme-économie, Emmanuelle Benicourt,
has described the movement’s aspirations 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.
The PAE
Movement is about bringing economics students and economists of goodwill
together to realize these changes, especially by promoting critical public
discussion and honest debate. This broadly international collection of 9
documents and 44 short, provocative essays, drawn from the post-autistic
economics review, is intended to promote these ends.
Finally, it seems
worthwhile to ask why the reform movement begun by the French students has,
unlike others, so quickly caught the imagination and involvement of so many
economists around the world. Three
reasons seem to stand out. Firstly,
the movement is founded on the sort of
optimism that youth is most capable of originating. The French students had the innocent
audacity to ask not for a mere amelioration of a deplorable state, but for a
total overhaul of economics and economics teaching, in short, for a new
beginning. The usual wary vocabulary
of the economics of dissent which presumes that the neoclassical hegemony
will continue, is completely absent from the students’ documents. Second is their notion of pluralism. Whereas traditionally the representatives
of different economic heterodoxies have effected a kind of pluralism by meeting in the name of
mutual tolerance and by conspiring through alliance for political advantage,
the pluralism of the PAE Movement—and this will
become clear as you read this book----is epistemologically grounded. It regards the various “schools” of economics, including neoclassicalism,
as offering different widows on economic reality, each bringing into view
different subsets of economic phenomena.
It rejects the idea that any school could possess final or total
solutions but accepts all as possible means for understanding real-life
economic problems. Third, among the
decent people of the world there is a growing revulsion against the global
financial regime whose policies, distilled from neoclassical dogma and forced
on the world’s poor, result annually in an invisible slaughter, millions
condemned for orthodoxy’s sake to needless death and suffering through the
withdrawal of life-supporting services in the false name of “good
economics”.
References
Jean-Paul Fitoussi, L'Enseignement supérieur des sciences 'économiques
en question :Rapport au ministre de l’ Éducation nationale. Paris:
Fayard, 2001.
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