Rod Hay writes: >And although I said that there was truth content in neoclassical economics. It is not all true (or I wouldn't be here). It is also useful. A good part of what passes for economics is politics dressed up in economic jargon. It pushes the economic agenda of a particular group. Imagine the surprise if a banker denounced monetarism....< I'm sure that some bankers denounce monetarism, since some of them had liquidity problems in 1982 due to Volcker's nominally monetarist policies. And, in practice, Greenspan denounces monetarism (though obviously not in words). His policies are very activist -- fine-tuning, in fact -- and focus on interest rates (rather than monetary aggregates) as operating and intermediate targets. He's an anti-monetarist, though he's very conservative (an erstwhile follower of Ayn Rand). I would guess he's also not a neoclassical in the sense of Phil Mirowski's definition. Thus, though I reject their perspectives, I think it's a mistake to get too involved in trashing the monetarists and even the neoclassicals. What's important is to criticize the powers that be. And presenting a coherent and meaningful alternative to the neoclassicals is the best criticism. Critiquing monetarism in the 1990s is like critiquing a fad that has passed. Of course, it's a matter of the definition of monetarism, but my impression is that most of monetarism has been folded into the school called "the New Keynesians" (a bit like Blair's New Labor?) or into its competition, "the New Classicals." While neoclassical economics in effect apologizes for capitalism by presenting an idealized (cleaned-up) vision of it as the scientific Truth, it's not simply a special-interest ideology. It's also a product of academia, complete with a full-blown Mandarin mentality. Whereas the Chinese Emperor's bureaucrats rose to the top by taking examinations which emphasized calligraphy and other matters irrelevant to preservation of the Empire, neoclassicals succeed by presenting extremely abstract and formal models that are often totally irrelevant to business. Though sometimes business groups will bring in Chicago School types to give speeches in defense of the free market, they find Chicago-school ideas useless when it comes to business operations and government policy. (They often find the more "liberal" versions of neoclassicism more useful.) What's scary is that the IMF pushes this Chicago ideology. But of course, they're doing it to people who don't have the power to resist. (I hope that I have not misrepresented the Mandarins. If so, I apologize ahead of time.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
