> Suresh Naidu wrote:
>
> >Given the general aversion to techie-math stuff often encountered
> >among lefty students, this becomes even worse. I'm a firm believer
> >in tearing down the master's house with his own tools, so I like
> >using mathematics in economics...If the bourgeois economists like
> >it so much, lets pin them to the wall with it.
********
This doesn't seem to really hit the right target. If all the economists were radicalized via new analytical tools we'd still have to confront the poly sci, business admin/management/marketing, and law departments to change the ongoing creation of economic behavior. It is the performativity that is capitalism and it's transformation that is at issue, not the reconfiguring of it's analyses via economics. Economics--the discipline-- is not the director of the play we call "the world market" and it is only a minor actor; the major actors come from the above departments [and all the high schools etc]. They're the places where radicals are needed to shake the bourgeoisie from it's cognitive coma. This is not to deny for one second that radical econ. doesn't have a role to play. It's the Wharton School of Business and their cousins at Columbia, Harvard etc. that are the problem. Just ask yourself "how many MBA's have to read/study in depth about climate change, other ecological issues or study the production of poverty yadda yadda?"
Ian
>