Re: Depoliticisisng economics

[Julio Huato <juliohuato@xxxxxxxxx>]

Michael,

> I wish that Julio were correct, that economists would be
> willing to listen attentively to analysis framed in terms
> familiar to them.  I think about how economists were able
> to "hijack" Keynes & put him back in a neo-classical box.

I wasn't responding to a question on how to persuade economists.

I mean, we all *know* that economists have minds as imperturbable as
rocks.  Plus, what could we possibly gain from winning the minds of
young or old economists to our positions?  In the absolutely
impossible case they ever shifted to the left, nobody would read them
or listen to them anyway.  Why bother?

If the "heterodox" traditions in economics vanished, the pathology of
capitalism would vanish with them.  And even if it didn't vanish,
economists would never take notice.  People would never re-discover
the radical critique of capitalism -- especially not the economists,
genetically engineered to give the system a break.  And if they did
rediscover it, they would do it in a framework unrecognizable to us. 
In a different form, it wouldn't really count as a radical critique of
capitalism.

* * *

The hijacking of Keynes by Hicks et alia had *nothing* to do with the
need to recast the story in a way amenable to empirical testing or
calibration for policy use.  (After all, Keynes didn't really mean his
ideas to help reform capitalism in a concrete way.  So why did anybody
thought of using them in policymaking?  That totally betrayed their
true purpose.)  What Keynesians worthy of the title should continue
doing is stick to their view that everybody else must come around to
their way of looking at things.  It's their way or the highway.

Of course, conventional economists will never come around, because
they are not susceptible to persuasion by argument.  But that's okay,
because that'd make the few true Keynesians out there look really good
by contrast.  And true Keynesians should demonize the Stiglitzes,
Akerlofs, and other pseudo-Keynesians who caved in to formal modeling
and abandoned the true essence of Keynesianism, which cannot be
captured in the dry language of mathematics.  Who needs testable
conclusions demonstrably flowing from the assumptions when such method
can only lead the economists astray?

Julio

PS: Forgive my sarcasm, Michael. :-]