Re: Whither the AEA?

[pdavidso <pdavidso@xxxxxxx>]

>===== Original Message From Hudsonmi@xxxxxxx =====
>Dear Paul, etc.
>       I can well understand your opposition to letting the neoclassicals
>take over the economics department. I found out already at the New School
that
>there was no way to introduce a non-neoclassical theory into the curriculum.
>Heilbroner refused to let me talk about money, interest and debt, saying that
>this would "confuse" students into thinking that there was more than one mode
of
>exploitation (that of vulgar Stalinism, his alternative to neoclassical
>economics).

I am surprised by this statement that you attribute to Heilbroner.  On the
other hand I am sure that Will Milberg would be very sympathetic to a Post
Keynesian analysis of money, debt, etc.


Also I should point out that at one time in the early 1980s I was asked to
give a macroeconomics course at the NEW SCHOOL -- and Idid!  I found no such
barier as you suggest at that time.

>       On the other hand, there is a very good strategic reason to LET the
>neoclassicals take over, totally.
>       That will let the discipline of economics fall away from reality
>altogether, like a rotten limb off a tree. Then, we can simply start a new
>discipline, called whatever we want.

This is, in my opinion sheer nonsense and the worst possible strategy.  It as
if Churchill had said  (in 1939) when the Nazis threatened to invade and take
over the British Isles ..

"Let the Nazi hordes have these Isles.  We will move to the virgin space
Antartica and rename it Great Britain and flourish in the Emerald Isle
there!!"


>       The principle is this: It is easier to start a new discipline afresh
>than to spend 99 times as much effort trying to reform, reprogram and
retrofit
>an already deformed discipline.


The principle is this:  If you are defending the correct economic principles
for an entreprneurial economy, then it is worth fighting for these principles
and not let the barabarians take over the discipline.

After all in economics, if the dominant mainstream forces rule the roost and
we non-orthodox Post Keynesians who, like Keynes, believe that money makes the
economic world go arond, yield the economic territory to these barbarians,
then we know the advise mainstream economists give policy makers and
entrepreneurs e can have disasterous consequences for an awful lot of innocent
people.

To let economic disaster  and hardship take place, in the hopes that in the
long run, after the Great Catastrophe, we will offer hope from Antartica means
not only are you sacrificing your academia integrity but you are willing to
stand-by while millions suffer economic losses unnecessarily.

Paul D.

Paul Davidson
Editor, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics
University of Tennessee
SMC 503
Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0550
office phone #;(865)974-3303; office fax#(865)974-4601
home phone and fax # (561)369-1951
email pdavidson@xxxxxxx
http://econ.bus.utk.edu/Davidson.html