The crisis of bourgeois economics

[blindpig]

Two Americas
08-10-2009, 12:35 PM

We have to wade through so much bullshit, so much drama.

Ironically, it is the progressives and liberals who are marginalized and narrowed and can get little or no traction with the general public, because in order to both pose as "change agents" and insist on working within the bounds of advocating only that which is acceptable to the people running the system - and then disguising that and hiding it - requires some mighty convoluted, almost incomprehensible "logic" and rhetoric.

It is easy to see now that this crap - "our core principles: social equality, substantive, participatory democracy, anti-militarism, human and animal rights, environmental balance and sustainability" - serves merely as a distraction. "Don't look at our bizarre logic and our ineffectiveness and complete disconnection from the general public and from reality - remember 'our core principles!'"

From there, people are led by the nose like this - "don't YOU support social equality, substantive, participatory democracy, anti-militarism, human and animal rights, environmental balance and sustainability? All of the good caring people do, you know. What kind of person are you that you would argue with us - the good people who are committed to those core values?? Some of us are realistic and practical and are doing what we can to advance those core principles, within the system. You can stand outside and whine and pout and scream if you want to, but is that really making anything any better?"

[blindpig]

Two Americas
08-10-2009, 06:06 PM

"It is an amazing commentary on the remoteness of most academic economics from any contact with reality that the 'new classicals' could maintain intellectual credibility when they denied the instability and irrationality of the laissez faire economy in a period which saw three major international recessions. But they had one very important asset on their side: their ideas were very comforting to the ruling class and its placemen and women holding positions of influence in the media and the universities."

[blindpig]

BitterLittleFlower
08-10-2009, 07:11 PM

by anyone other than a confirmed leftist should at least be reconsidered."

this line alone is so ludicrous I'm incredulous...how someone could seriously write that as a criteria for consideration is...I'm nonplussed...:wtf: is right.

[blindpig]

Dhalgren
08-10-2009, 07:49 PM
I can hardly speak with my University "friends". They get all nervous and conspiratorial and lower their voices and almost giggle with the bravery they show at sitting next to someone who talks like I do! This Professor of rhetoric and communications I know told me one day that he had never actually read Marx, but he couldn't agree with his basic ideas. I asked him how he could really have any opinion of Marx's ideas if he had never read him. He looked at me like I had something growing out of my forehead. American Universities are what they are paid to be: training grounds for Empire and almost nothing else...


I am only halfway through the article, so I have more to read before commenting directly, but I think the thing (so far) that is so amazing to me is that Keynesian Economics is so threadbare. The way that so much of it seems to be so "off-the-cuff" and so patch-worked. All of these "economists" just pay lip service to the various offshoots of this thing apparently because they don't know what else to do! And someone was worried about "leftists" getting laughed at?! Ha!

Anyway, back to the read...

[blindpig]

Dhalgren
08-10-2009, 07:49 PM
I can hardly speak with my University "friends". They get all nervous and conspiratorial and lower their voices and almost giggle with the bravery they show at sitting next to someone who talks like I do! This Professor of rhetoric and communications I know told me one day that he had never actually read Marx, but he couldn't agree with his basic ideas. I asked him how he could really have any opinion of Marx's ideas if he had never read him. He looked at me like I had something growing out of my forehead. American Universities are what they are paid to be: training grounds for Empire and almost nothing else...


I am only halfway through the article, so I have more to read before commenting directly, but I think the thing (so far) that is so amazing to me is that Keynesian Economics is so threadbare. The way that so much of it seems to be so "off-the-cuff" and so patch-worked. All of these "economists" just pay lip service to the various offshoots of this thing apparently because they don't know what else to do! And someone was worried about "leftists" getting laughed at?! Ha!

Anyway, back to the read...

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
08-10-2009, 08:29 PM

reading Marx and writing books about how they can't agree with his basic ideas. Or, there were anyway. I've been combing the public library and there is a copious amount of material all falling under that same umbrella from the 60s and 70s.

Its absurd -- 10 chapters of carefully developed explanations of Marxian thought..followed by one vicious chapter of full bore assault with little or no regard to anything but pressing the offensive. Factual accuracy and objectivity are the first to go. The tone shifts to something akin to what you find on the internet talking about the NWO.

There was definitely a cottage industry for that crap. (Now it appears to mainly be confined to internet crackpots)

[blindpig]

blindpig
08-11-2009, 04:38 AM

I asked for Kapital and was pointed to a a section where I guess the books were arranged by 'political philosophy'. Other than several copies of Kapital everything else grouped there was anti-communist, all 50's to early seventies vintage and mostly pretty lurid.

What, no Lenin?

[blindpig]

Dhalgren
08-11-2009, 06:43 AM

"Both <Marx and Keynes> had implied that capitalism as we know it is no longer an advancing system with a great future". This based on Keynes' "declining marginal efficiency of capital" and Marx's theory of "the tendency of the rate of profit to decline" - which, evidently, is essentially the same thing? So the Owners have been riding this dead horse for generations, knowing it was a dead-end, just to squeeze the last few drops of blood from the corpse of the working class - no real attempts at any kind of transition to something manageable - just drain the body dry and disappear into the night...


This article is pretty good stuff - a lot of it over my head, but still, some pretty good stuff..

[blindpig]

meganmonkey
08-11-2009, 07:23 AM

I've read it all the way through once, plan to again. I don't have much of a background in econ, so some of it is over my head, but I do have some background in philosophy so I can fake it

Actually, some of the stuff in this article (esp re: Hayek) was pushed on me in my undergrad years by a Social Theory prof. Even then I could see the huge assumptions this stuff is based on and how they were never addressed, how removed it all was from reality. The first time I was called a Socialist was in that class - I dared ask what was meant by 'progress', why it was assumed to be good, and why it was assumed to be infinite, and he asked me my major (soc/anthro) and told me I was a socialist and I would never understand this.

It's really interesting to me to revisit it 15 years later and see its actual significance in the real world - I didn't understand the influence it had.

btw: I did end up getting an 'A' in the class, The prof was so used to econ majors who memorized things and never asked questions - even though he and I disagreed constantly we developed a good rapport for debate and he was happy to meet a student who actually thought about stuff, even though I was 'wrong'. There were only 4 students in the class and the rest of them were quiet..my final paper was some convoluted attempt to use Hayek and D'Souza's arguments to defend affirmative action, LOL. I think I still have a copy of that.

[blindpig]

Two Americas
08-11-2009, 10:04 AM

So the purpose of the class is not to actually teach people anything about economics. The purpose is to convince people that economics is really difficult to understand and that socialism is bad.

That should help people with the article, which wades through all of the smoke screen the apologists for capitalism - which is actually obeisance to the powerful - throw at us. Keynes and others are convoluted and difficult not because the subject of economics is difficult, but rather because that is required to get out of the corners they paint themselves into and because it is useful to the rulers if the entire subject becomes incomprehensible.

So, you were called a Socialist because you asked what was meant by 'progress' and why it was assumed to be good and infinite. Then you were told that because you were a socialist you would never understand what was being peddled.

Seems to me that the whole field of academics is dominated by people whose mission is to make sure everyone is intimidated by the subject. It isn't the subject that is inherently or exceptionally difficult, it is being made to be.

We are dealing with the equivalent of the flat earth society here. Imagine if you were taking astronomy classes, and the instructor was trying to reconcile the objective evidence about the solar system with a flat earth theory. That would get pretty difficult to understand, too.