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www.paecon.net Science & Society Fall 2001 OF PEOPLE, CURVES, AND AUTISM by David Laibman scsjj@cunyvm.cuny.edu Strolling across the new campus of Complutense University on the outskirts of Madrid, in March 1999, I was struck upon seeing this slogan, painted on a wall: "La econom!a es de gente, no de curvas!" ("Economics is about people, not curves!").  Anyone who has not had the pleasure of instruction in contemporary academic economics may not fully appreciate the students' sense of being tormented by "curves": diagrammatic representations of relationships among vari- ables. (Think of intersecting supply and demand curves.)  The slo- gan rejects abstract and quantitative theory in economics -- and by extension in the human disciplines generally -- in favor of study of concrete, historical social reality.      I had no idea at the time that the "people vs. curves" slogan I witnessed would turn out to be prophetic.  In June 2000 a group of French students assembled a petition, published on the web, complaining about the current state of economics: its indiscrimi- nate use of mathematics; the "repressive domination" by neoclassi- cal theory; and the exclusion of alternative, critical approaches. The students called upon the economics profession to engage with the empirical and the concrete, to avoid "scientism," to embrace "a pluralism of approaches adapted to the complexity of economic ob- jects and to the uncertainty surrounding most of the big economic questions," and to pursue reforms "to rescue economics from its autistic and socially irresponsible state."  The petition resulted in the launching of the Post-Autistic Economics Movement, which has spread like wildfire among students in France and Spain, with grow- ing numbers of correspondents in other countries as well.  On June 21, Le Monde reported on the movement and solicited statements from leading economists worldwide.  A conference to produce more de- tailed proposals was held in December 2000.  Since then the move- ment has continued to grow and develop.(1)       The economics establishment, for the most part, has been waiting to see if the storm will pass.  One noteworthy response came from Professor Robert Solow of MIT, Noble Laureate and progen- itor of the "neoclassical" growth model that has recently become a staple of courses in macroeconomic theory.  Writing in Le Monde, January 3, 2001, Solow called the students' position "an exagger- ated reaction to this minority group (of highly mathematical theo- rists), or a disguised attack upon something else."  Concerning the dominance of neoclassical theory, Solow characterized that theory as follows: households and firms are rational; prices and wages are flexible, so that goods and labor markets "find their equilibrium"; and competition is "almost perfect."  All of this, however, Solow noted, has been called into question by neoclassical economists themselves, who now study incomplete markets, imperfect competi- tion, rigid prices, asymmetric information, and other complexities. We can all agree, the argument goes, that the simple model is not adequate; the challenge is to find ways to go beyond it without becoming immersed in undue complexity.  In short, the students -- to the extent they are not engaging in irrational debate "relevant to doctrine, even ideology" -- are stating what everyone already knows: that progress in science requires continuing work to clear the path from abstract and simple theory to ever more complex lay- ers of reality.  "Everyone would like to see the real needs of the students satisfied, without sacrificing necessary rigor.  That can certainly be done."(2)      Now the students' movement, with its call for pluralism and for "critical and reflective thought," is a remarkably positive development, and it is a sign of their potential that top guns like Solow have emerged to engage with them.  I find, however, that an attempt to come to grips with Solow's argument also raises some questions concerning the students' position. or perhaps concerning ambiguities in the statement of that position reflecting the coali- tion character of the movement.      The hallmark of the Solow response, after all, is its reason- ableness.  We all want the same thing, he says: good applied eco- nomics, relevant to real-life problems and issues.  In his subtle deprecation of "ideology," however, Solow fails to note the ideo- logical role of his own neoclassical consensus.  The religion of the "free market" is closely connected to the abstractions of ra- tionality, competition and equilibrium as summarized by Solow.  But when these abstractions are questioned, their proponents say that of course no one believes in them any more!  We are concerned, they insist, with the messy world of limited information, limited compe- tition, non-equilibrium behavior, etc.  Trying to pin this down is, as one of my colleagues once put it, like "boxing with jello."  Or, to cite a phrase from the philosopher Hilary Putnam, neoclassical economics "keeps a double set of books" (quoted in Vivian Walsh, Rationality, Allocation, and Reproduction, p. 6).  One set is for undergraduate students, politicians and journalists: it promotes the social optimality of "perfect" competition and the "free" mar- ket.  The other set is brought out whenever critics, such as the students organized in the post-autistic economics movement, try to get to the bottom of this pervasive pro-capitalist ideology.      Consider Solow's main points summarizing the neoclassical position.  First, the claim that "households and firms" are ratio- nal actors reveals an unexamined assumption: the economy's funda- mental units are "households and firms" -- not, to go directly to the point, social classes (and individuals insofar as they act as representatives of classes).  Solow invites us to join him at the frontiers of economic science in questioning the postulate of ra- tional behavior; he does not, however, question his conception of the actors as such.  Second, the assumption that "markets" are in (or close to) "equilibrium" fails to address the central claim of the only other theoretical tradition to confront this issue. "Equi- librium" is always incomplete when the core relationship determin- ing wage rates is antagonistic; moreover, the apparent concordance of individual rational wills in the market is a surface manifesta- tion of an underlying social reality involving domination, exploi- tation, and oppression.  This alternative tradition, of course, is Marxism.  (I cannot, of course, develop the argument fully here.) Finally, we are urged to abandon "almost perfect competition" in favor of various forms of market imperfection.  Again, the study of power is recommended, but it is limited in advance to market power, ignoring the pervasive and immanent forms of social power associ- ated with the unequal distribution of property in capitalist econo- mies.  This latter structure of power is most clearly manifest when markets are functioning well, and competition (among capitalists) is "perfect" -- i.e., market power is absent.      The crucial limitations of the dominant neoclassical ideology are thus revealed when that ideology is considered in its pure form -- on the abstract terrain where "market equilibrium" is efficient and optimal.  The students' spontaneous opposition to abstract theory, and its embodiment in mathematical models, thus plays into the hands of the neoclassical nihilists, who claim to agree that everything is in fact more complex than the simple models suggest and invite the post-autistic students to join with them in explor- ing that complexity.  This move, however, evades the real issue: the existence of an alternative and more powerful simple model.(3) It should be unnecessary to add that the alternative core model will not be fruitful unless it too is developed and extended via increasingly complex versions and approaches that approximate ever more closely to reality.  Moreover, the Marxist alternative has at its center the complex interface between "economic" and other in- stances of social life, refusing to allow economic abstraction to obfuscate the social and historical nature of the reality that is our object of investigation.      All that said, it remains true that abstraction and logic -- and therefore mathematics -- are central tools for any alternative economics that hopes to challenge and eventually displace the neo- classical position.  I would remind students and others who are suspicious of these formalisms that it was Bakunin who accused Marx of theoretical autism.  He said (as reported in John Lewis' Karl Marx), "Marx spoils the workers; he makes logic-choppers out of them."  If Marx, not Bakunin, was right about this, he is warning us about the danger of allowing a "red" vs. "expert" dichotomy to establish itself.  Those who are committed to social change must seek the most secure and general conceptual foundations, and must know all of the bends in the curves.      To put it in a nutshell: we cannot abandon the field of ab- straction to the neoclassical hegemon.  Paraphrasing von Claus- ewicz, abstract social theory is too important to be left to the abstract social theorists: the ideological state apparatuses of the capitalist ruling class.  In order to be truly "about people," then -- and to become useful in the movements for social transformation -- economics must also be "about curves."  Which curves, and how they turn, is a question for another occasion. FOOTNOTES      1. Information about the Post-Autistic Economics Movement can be      found on its website, www.paecon.net.  There is a newsletter,      which can be accessed by sending email to pae_news      @btinternet.com.      2. Non-economist readers may wonder about the origin of the term      "neoclassical" to describe today's economic orthodoxy.   This      is a complex subject that cannot be adequately explored here,      but in essence the term refers to continuity with the "clas-      sical" economics of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, but only      insofar as the distinguishing feature of the classical tradi-      tion is held to be the commitment to "laissez-faire" poli-      cies.  This ignores other aspects of classical theory -- its      focus on social class and accumulation -- which connect the      classical writers more to Marx than to the present-day ver-      sions of the invisible hand.  I am indebted to Derek Lovejoy      for translating Solow's article back into English.      3. I deliberately use the singular "model" here, rather than "mod-      els," to be provocative!  Just as Solow is asserting that      there is ultimately only one model, I am claiming that, in      the last instance, there is only one alternative model.      Institutionalism does not amount to a theoretical alterna-      tive, owing to its fundamental commitment against theory.      Post-Keynesian or "structural" Keynesian theory attempts to      carve out a middle ground, but must eventually settle on one      side or the other.  This claim should not be taken as intend-      ing to undermine the coalitional and pluralist spirit of the      post-autistic economics movement.