No subject

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[Moderator's Note: Thanks again for all of the thought-provoking comments
so far. Just a reminder that the open discussion will close at the end of
Monday (11/30), after which Norgaard will have the opportunity to respond.
-- Jonathan]

A few comments about Richard Norgaard=E2=80=99s analysis of the church of
economics. First, I agree with much, perhaps most, of his argument. I would
go further though in situating the ideology of economics in modernity.
Norgaard emphasizes individualism and self-interest as foundational
assumptions, and these are key. But I would add three more assumptions: an
ideology of desire that assumes wants are unlimited, an ideology of
knowledge that prioritizes rationality, and an ideology of community that
assumes the nation state is the primary, if not the only, community. Taken
together, these are not only the assumptions of mainstream economics, but
also the assumptions of modernity. Indeed, economics is the cutting edge of
modernity, the formalization of its unconscious cultural presuppositions.
So the challenge is larger than economics: it is one of redressing the
extreme imbalance of the ideology of modernity.

Many people see the ideology of modernity as liberating. And so it is when
the imbalance is in the other direction: when communities stifle
individuals, when the poor receive meager rations and are taught that to
want more is a sin, when rationality is not allowed to challenge tradition,
when the nation is suppressed by empire. But modernity too suffocates when
society is regarded as nothing more than a collection of individuals; when
having becomes being; when experience is denied, or, equivalently, is
dismissed as superstition when it cannot be explained by the dominant
rationality; when the nation state undermines other communities.

The problem with modernity is not individualism. Neither is it individual
desire, rationality, or the nation state. It is rather a state of imbalance
in which these assumptions crowd out other ways of being and knowing.

Yes, we need a new economics, and we need to situate this economics in a
new set of cultural presuppositions, ones more suited to an age where
sustainability is the watchword. And we need as well to pay attention to
the point that John Ashton made in a recent post--"This is a political
struggle as well as an intellectual one. There is no point in building a
better theory if we cannot at the same time weaken the hold of the
prevailing one over the choices made on our behalf."

The success of the Keynesian revolution in economics, limited as it was,
was in no small part due to its symbiosis with the political revolution of
social democracy in Europe and the New Deal in the United States. It is no
coincidence that the counter revolution in economics that brought us the
new classical economics took place at about the same time that center-left
coalitions responsible for the New Deal and social democracy came to grief.

The failure of radical economics to create a new paradigm in the late =E2=
=80=9860s
and early =E2=80=9870s cannot be attributed to a single cause. But the poli=
tical
failure of the New Left to build a new politics is certainly one of the
reasons.

If a new economics is to thrive it will only be in conjunction with a new
politics. Some hoped for that new politics in the person of Barack
Obama=E2=80=94and were disappointed. Some looked to Occupy=E2=80=94and were=
 disappointed.
Until we find the basis of a new politics, people like Richard Norgaard (I
count myself among them) can plant seeds, but unless the soil and climate
are favorable, the seeds will not flourish, and may not even germinate.

Stephen Marglin
Harvard University

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Saturday, November 28, 2015