Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Orthodox economists have failed their own market test

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Orthodox economists have failed their own market test

Click here to access article by Seumas Milne from The Guardian.

Many...students, though, have had enough. A revolt against the orthodoxy has been smouldering for years and now seems to have gone critical. Fed up with parallel universe theories that have little to say about the world they're interested in, students at Manchester University have set up a post-crash economics society with 800 members, demanding an end to monolithic neoclassical courses and the introduction of a pluralist curriculum.

It is becoming apparent that economics students are not buy the ruling class's version of economics. The author even implies that this version, whose proponents are intolerant of all others, is about power and domination--in other words, orthodox economics is the academic manifestation of class warfare.