At the recent (and first ever) ICAPE (international confederation for the advancement of pluralism in economics) conference here at UMKC, an Austrian economist on a panel on "Rethinking (Post-)Capitalism" said he would not use the word "capitalism" because it was created by people who were critical of the market system to try to highlight the negative things about it.
Heilbroner in his Nation review of Mankiw's textbook and elsewhere puzzled over why the word "capitalism" cannot be or is only very infrequently found in economics textbooks and journal articles (comparing it to a textbook or journal on Medieval Studies not using the word feudalism), and rejected the answer that it is due to the "negative" connotations. Instead, he said he thought that it was because the word "capitalism" makes clear that the object of study has an undeniable sociopolitical aspect, which economists see as a challenge to the "scientific" status of economics. Mat -----Original Message----- From: Doug Henwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 4:34 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] frontline: home | PBS Michael Hoover wrote: >pbs apparently has policy prohibiting persons being interviewed for >broadcast from using terms 'capitalist' and 'capitalism', reference to >'business elite' is ok, info comes from michael zweig who was recently >subjected to said policy... michael hoover That's an outrageous policy, of course, but if I were on mainstream TV, I wouldn't use "capitalist" or "capitalism" either - I'd opt for more acceptable euphemisms. I've found over the years that lots of ordinary people are susceptible to Marxist analyses as long as they don't know that's what they're hearing. Doug
