Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 15:07:40 -0800 Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:4510] Re: economics: monolithic or pluralist? Someone (recieved 30 March) wrote ... >Is the economics profession/discipline monolithic or pluralist? >This question might sound self-indulgent, but it is well-intentioned. >It is a product of some recent media exchanges in Australia/New >Zealand. Which media exchanges about what? Peter Robertson. The answer was included in the next paragraph in the original note, to whit: The 'quality' press in A/NZ gives much attention to economic issues (in the general part of the paper as well as the business/finance section), and that exposure is near-monolithically given over to the eternal verities of the right libertarian position - deregulate, privatise, everything that moves, 'independent' central bank, etc. It's an ongoing process that covers but transcends particular issues - GATT, public utilities, labour conditions, greenhouse, etc. ANybody who disagrees is ex-communicated either as a populist idiot or representative of a vested interest. IN a sense, the right libertarian agenda now hogs the stage as the great cultural unifier (or disunifier), crowding out God, Queen and Country (though it hasn't yet dislodged 'the family', being part of a continuing intra-right dispute). The agenda is pushed and defended as the product of a 'truth-possessing economics discipline, in turn rooted in a rigorous corpus of theory. My point is that it appears more politically productive to attack economics per se than to claim that this stuff is the product of one brand of economics. On the contrary, one needs to go for the jugular. It seems to me that the libertarian right is right. They are economics. We dissenters who hang around the edges are essentially imposters and we do the profession a favour (and the public a disservice) by making the profession look more tolerant than it is. Evan Jones
