FionaK |
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| I came across a paper by someone called Tony Lawson which I thought was interesting. It is a pdf file and so I am not able to link it, since I don't know how. But I will say something about his analysis because I think he elaborates a number of things I have been thinking about in quite an interesting way
Mr Lawson points to the failure of neoclassical economics to describe and predict real world outcomes. He says this is now widely acknowledged within the economics profession and that a great deal of soul searching is going on within academia because of the financial crash and its implications for the subject.
He goes on to consider the "heterdox" (which is the name for those economists who do not accept the neoclassical position) criticism which is often based on charges of ideology: a position I have also taken. According to Mr Lawson those criticisms can be boiled down to two different strands. In the first the neoclassical economists are said to be "swimming in their water", that is they are unable to see and to question the assumptions of capitalism.Those assumptions are therefore taken as read and the enterprise begins from that base. The other strand is that the economists are in fact aware of those premises and are actively promoting and defending the status quo. Mr Lawson does not accept either of those propositions and he lays the failure elsewhere.
What he is essentially saying, if I have understood him correctly, is that the ideology which underpins the failure of economics is the "scientism" I have referred to before. He asserts that the true problem is reliance on mathematical modelling and he goes further: from his point of view the models are not even intended to describe the real world: they are an exercise in themselves. According to his analysis both the neoclassicist and the heterdox economists are convinced that the maths is essential and their point of difference is which model. He suggests that the answer is "no model", and that other ways of approaching the subject are required. I agree with that. It does not just apply to economics it applies to the whole of so-called social science, and I need not rehearse an argument I have made many times before in this thread.
I agree with Mr Lawson so far: but where I part company with him is the "Werner von Braun" element in his analysis. From his point of view mainstream economics is irrelevant to policy and real world behaviour: he goes so far as to say that it is that very irrelevance which has allowed it to continue because, he says, it does not challenge any political position. That being so nobody bothers to challenge or to attack its funding.
From my point of view that is not true. However unengaged some academic economists might be; however much they may concentrate on gettng sunlight out of cucumbers, the fact remains that neoclassical models are used to justify particular political positions. It is also true that the "revolving door", and the corruption of academia through private sector funding and through lucrative "consultancies" in both corporations and in government, makes his case unsustainable. At least that is how I see it.
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