Who is an economist?
posted Nov. 22 - 10:01 pm by Rob B
Two audience responses to Jim Stanford's keynote talk about "demystifying economics" as a requirement for social change made me think about another way in which economics, as a mainstream discipline, is used in service of capital against workers. Throughout his talk, Stanford hilariously skewered mainstream economics reportage as an emperor with no clothes (making symbolic appearances that we can learn nothing from, like the two-minute, five-times-daily "market update"), or the way such reportage adopts the language of neutrality and abstraction to foreclose discussion of economic alternatives.
The understanding that this economics miseducation imparts to most of us is that we— those of us who live in the economy of selling our time to earn all or most of our living— are essentially dependent on those in the parallel world of finance (or paper exchange), rather than the other way around. In essence, economic reportage is about the health of the financial sector, deployed as excuses to advance the freedom interests of that sector over the ones we inhabit. The thrust of Stanford's talk was that our exclusion from this economic discourse, often through the deliberate obscurantism of economists, leaves us intellectually unprepared to argue for our own interests, as well as too intimidated to demand and mobilize for alternatives (or side with others doing so).
If, on the other hand, we could learn to understand economic life "in our own terms"—as workers who sell our time to earn our pay—we could confidently demand the basics of economic justice. We could demand the changes in the rules of financialization to prevent the kind of speculative bubble— which resulted in a massive tax transfer from our pockets to corporations— from happening again. We could resist unnecessary (and harmful) concessions to our public services and entitlements. To do so, however, means that in addition to learning, we have to organize and struggle for these basic forms of economic justice, because the history of economic crises demonstrates that governments have never acted on their own to implement economic solutions (like a stimulus) properly.
As I wrote above, Stanford's talk generated two sets of responses: first, affirmation that it is a programme of common sense and realism that can win consensus among workers, and secondly, disappointment that Stanford's talk did not go further, that his talk existed "too much in the framework of existing capitalism."
To some degree, I thought that both of these critiques missed the point. Part of what I began to think makes economics "exclusive" to a lettered group of people (who are usually closely aligned to the financialization industry) is not just its jargon—the "mumbo jumbo" that Stanford refers to; nor is it merely that economists "abstract" human realities into graphs and numbers. Rather, economics (as a discipline) limits the scope of what you may talk about in order to be understood as an economist. I have noticed that ordinary folk—or even scholarly activists who have studied economics as part of their advocacy—run into difficulty being heard "as economists" when they address economists in mainstream forums. Many "lay economists" eloquently suggest what we should all know by now: that science and ecology are changing what we know to be true about the resources of the earth, that nature is the true foundation of economics, that we need a fundamentally "new" economics, and so on. Dozens if not hundreds of books have been written for reforming the foundations of economics to incorporate people. But at the moment a speaker or author does so, they're considered environmentalists instead of economists.
Therefore, I think that this "exclusive" feature that determines, at this moment, "who is an economist?" — shapes the critique that someone like Stanford (or his colleagues at Progressive Economics Blog) can give. The role of economist determines the style, and the style shapes the focus. Occupying the role of an officially designated "economist," Stanford himself is limited to a particular focus in order for him to be understood as economist: to whatever conclusions he marshals facts, he still has to describe what is possible (in a relatively narrow way) with the mechanisms and policy choices we have available to us in the system that exists.
To be an economist proper is to mainly involve oneself in a common language with economists examining the play of recognized institutions of economic power with a relatively narrow focus: As Peter Brown pointed out later in the conference, economics as a discipline has all but ignored (among other things) shifts in the realities of contemporary science and nature. While we frequently hear economists admit that they are or were wrong about one prediction or another, this means that, in its mainstream incarnation, economics has largely avoided the deep foundational shifts that other disciplines have taken.
Reading the blog that Jim Stanford co-founded with other dedicated labour economists, you can see both the benefits and limits inherent in the approach of speaking "as an economist," "within the disciplinary limits." Andrew Jackson's article on the coming state attack on public services employees is a good example. For anyone in the corner of working people and public services, it's bad news, but the way it's spoken of is a blast of fresh air. Here's a recognized economist myth-busting the various justifications for cutting public sector workers and investment as an 'exit strategy' from the recession. It identifies these justifications for what they are (and usefully, also well in advance of the assault): "the true target is the wages and benefits of all workers." And in an expansion to this article in The Bullet (put out by the Socialist Project), Jackson echoes a call for "an adult discussion" on taxes and full investment in all levels of public infrastructure— because it's possible.
But on the other hand, the conspicuous omission from this tight focus on 'what is possible, here and now' makes me wonder what can be argued within when our needs might exceed what the system— potentially burdened from past mistakes—can give. As we lead up to the Copenhagen conference, this possibility seems represented by the recent IPCC announcement that temperature will rise to average of 6C, exceeding what "capitalism as we know it" — which prioritizes endless growth — may be willing to deliver on the basis of reason, or potentially even the justification of most of our survival.
Thus I felt that the conference was well-served by not merely assembling "the left wing" of friendly recognized economists like Stanford but by diverse voices representing areas of knowledge that economics itself will soon have to come to terms with. It's also why I thought that to critique Stanford for "not going far enough" or "sticking within the capitalist framework" misses the value of a labour economist using the language of economics, battling it out in ink on the pages of the Globe and Mail or the Calgary Herald. There's a devastating logic to using economists' own data to make a rational case for what would be possible now if you conducted the economy as if people mattered. Stanford's talk, I thought, made me understand that all activists' struggles are struggles, even if not stated as such, directed at economics as a discipline to recognize the realities it omits.
So to conclude, Stanford's talk was superb and welcomed and entertaining and already forecast the major questions that were formulated for me for the rest of the conference:
- what knowledge does economics exclude or leave out?
- what alternatives to "endless growth" as a measure of an economy's health exist?
- to what degree does the "abstraction" of economic language mask its social effects? or mask the possible ways the economy could work in our favour?
- have global environmental crises shifted the focus of progressive demands (from addressing, as Nathan Rao said, "capitalism as a system of exploitation" to "capitalism as a system of destruction")?
- how have global environmental crises extended or enabled our current critiques of the system? Has environmental discourse limited our critiques (perhaps by stressing our survival over equality?)
