Louis Proyect wrote: > You make it sound like the government of the U.S. chooses between Michael > Perelman and Ben Bernanke as if it was someone at a Chinese restaurant > trying to decide between Beef with Broccoli and Mooshoo Pork.
I agree that this menu approach is a mistake. The propaganda role of economics teaching can be (and is) exaggerated. As Marx pointed out (in so, so many words), looking at capitalism from the inside, from the perspective of the individual consumer, worker, or capitalist, produces a radically incomplete and one-sided vision of what's going on (a fetishized understanding of the system). This fetishized "common sense," in his view, was the source of most of what he impolitely called "vulgar political economy." I'd say that this is also the source of modern neoclassical economics (including most of macroeconomics!) It's the dominant view that is reinforced (and thus reproduced over time) by the academic mandarinate that I referred to earlier. In this view, the propaganda coming from most economists simply _reinforces_ the normal "common sense" that people come up with on their own. It's not the only force, by the way: I think that many teenagers want to prove their individuality vis-à-vis their parents (usually by imitating or following other teenagers). They are thus prone to "libertarian" ideas, to "free market" economics. So we might say that economists supply propaganda, but many people demand it. As Julio said, it's not only governments who make choices. Now, the fetishized perspective is undermined by such things as workers being united in large workplaces and their forming of organizations to fight to attain collective goals. The fact that teenagers try to prove their individuality in large groups also opens the way for more collectivist notions. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
