Just about everyone I know has horror stories from graduate school about perceived scholar despots, inner cliques, "old boy networks etc". But that level gets us no where beyond anecdotes. A few years ago Dave Colander and Bob Coats edited a book "The Dissemination of Economic Ideas" based on a conference on the same subject. Dave's idea was to move toward the development of a separate specialized area within The History of Economic Thought dealing with specialized study of the institutions, constraints, processes, mechanisms, interests etc through which economic ideas and theories are introduced, chocked off, modified, replaced, superceded and spread within the profession. It involves sort of the economics profession looking at itself and applying some of its own "axioms", theories, constructs (e.g. homo economicus) to itself. What comes through loud and clear is that institutions and institutionalized paradigms whether left, middle or right do what they do. In other words institutions, or dynamic complexes of interrelated values, power structures, codes, constraints, traditions, myths, symbols, rights, privileges, regulations etc serve to structure human interactions, reduce risk and uncertainty, define and reinforce the "sacred" paradigms and ideas while deterring and sanctioning perceived subversive paradigms and ideas, legitmate and reinforce dominant power structures and relations while neutralizing threats to those structures and relations, propagandize, create clones of those in power etc. That is what institutions do--among other things--whether on the right or left. There are "left radicals" and then there are left radicals. In other words there are those for whom being a "left radical" is a total way of life and way of seeing the world and there are "left radicals" for whom being a "left radical" is a kind of specialized market niche allowing CV building through "alternative journals" (and making those alternative journals more and more like the "mainstream" journals in which these folks cannot get published for various reasons), careers with caricatures of the left (e.g. well paid bureaucrats in private and governmental agencies "serving" the poor), comfortable tenured positions that allow course developments based on the narrow and often narcissistic research interests of the course developers (as opposed to on the basis of mass interests or strategic issues in need of detailed examination) and various forms of scholar despotism and insider clique building much like those forms for which the right- wingers in academia are famous--e.g. The Chicago School as a clone factory. What can we say. Ultimately it is not so much what one says what one is as what one does and what one is prepared to risk when the chips are really down. On the right or the left, that tells who is who and what is what. Jim Craven *------------------------------------------------------------------* * James Craven * "The envelope is only defined--and * * Dept of Economics * expanded--by the test pilot who dares* * Clark College * to push it." * * 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. * (H.H. Craven Jr.(a gifted pilot) * * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 * * * (360) 992-2283 * "For those who have fought for it, * * [EMAIL PROTECTED] * freedom has a taste the protected * * * will never know." (Otto Von Bismark) * * * * * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *