Talk:Heterodox economics movement

Article Checklist for "Heterodox economics movement"

Workgroup category or categories	Economics Workgroup, Sociology Workgroup, Politics Workgroup [Editors asked to check categories]
Article status	Developed article: complete or nearly so
Underlinked article?	No
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	J. R. Campos 07:06, 8 April 2007 (CDT)

To learn how to fill out this checklist, please see CZ:The Article Checklist.

---

a couple questions

Could the article define what it means by "heterodox"? What are they heterodox in comparison to (was it the same in the early 19th century as it is today)? Also, all of the trends mentioned seem to be various forms of socialism. Would a more specific title perhaps be appropriate?—Nat Krause 17:29, 25 March 2007 (CDT)

So far yes. The split between the "orthodox" traditions and the "heterodox" traditions begin with Rousseau and start widening more and more. When we arrive in late XXth century you will feel more confortable about the term "heterodox".

Wait for the baritone, the article is in its very first stages...Guru2001 21:47, 25 March 2007 (CDT)

PS - I think your doubts you will be cleared once we do the "Ricardian Socialists". There the meaning of "heterodox" becames closer to today's.

Guru2001 21:57, 25 March 2007 (CDT)

Would not it be clearer to speak about alternative economic system arising as responses to failures of mainstream classical and neoclassical economics?

Crises of Capitalism in the nineteenth century gave rise to Marxist and Georgist economics. The 1930s gave rise to Social Credit of CH Douglas and Binary Economics of Louis Kelso. Admittedly none of these people were trained economists but that may be their strength in perceiving the flaws of dominant economic models.

Janos Abel 17:47, 17 April 2007 (CDT)

Links

Can you, João, or anyone else for that matter, please replace all of the external links that are placed in-line in the body of this article with links to CZ articles? I did this with the first instance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Also, I assume that "Economic heterodox tradition" is a term of art among economists? --Larry Sanger 19:26, 25 March 2007 (CDT)

Point 1> I did not understand what you meant.

Point 2> Yes, it is. But as everything in Economics, some certainly will not agree...

Guru2001 21:49, 25 March 2007 (CDT)

PS - If you want to get realy "confused" about "heterodox traditions", read the following:

I do not wish to imply that individuals working mostly within heterodox traditions in economics could not themselves make a contribution to philosophical ontology. On philosophical matters the flow of insights can be both ways between projects in ontology and the heterodox traditions in economics. Indeed, currently there is real blossoming of insightful output by heterodox economists and others critically interacting with and seeking to shape (at the least the application of) the sort of ontological perspective described above, a perspective often systematised as critical realism in economics. See in particular Arestis, Brown and Sawyer, 203; Beaulier and Boettke, 2004; Davis, 2004; Dow, 1999, 2003; Downward, Finch and Ramsey, 2003; Downward and Mearman, 2003a, 2003b; Dunn, 2004; Finch and McMaster (2003); Graça Moura, Mario da, 2004; Hands, 2004; Hargreaves Heap 2004; Kuiper, 2004; Lee, 2003; Lewis, 2004a, 2004b; McKenna and Zannoni, 1999; Nell, 2004; Olsen, 2003; Pagano, 2004; Pinkstone, 2003; Rotheim, 1999; Setterfield, 2003; Smithin, 2004.

Full text:

http://pdfdownload.bofd.net/pdf2html.php?url=http://www.bresserpereira.org.br/Terceiros/05.5.Heterodox_Economics.pd

On point (1): you wrote, for example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This is a link that points to an external source. But in that place, instead of a link to an external source, we want a link to our own article, even if it does not exist yet: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We place links to external articles in an "External links" section in the endmatter. Please see CZ:Article Mechanics about endmatter. --Larry Sanger 22:46, 25 March 2007 (CDT)

Article title

I'm not an editor or scholar in economics (I do have my BA in this subject), but I don't recall hearing the term "economic heterodox tradition", precisely, before. Also, it gets no google hits at all.—Nat Krause 16:21, 27 March 2007 (CDT)

On the Economis per se issue...

A previous Nobel Memorial Prize winner in economic science gives a more critical report:

"Page after page of professional economic journals are filled with mathematical formulas leading the reader from sets of more or less plausible but entirely arbitrary assumptions to precisely stated but irrelevant theoretical conclusions.....Year after year economic theorists continue to produce scores of mathematical models and to explore in great detail their formal properties; and the econometricians fit algebraic functions of all possible shapes to essentially the same sets of data without being able to advance, in any perceptible way, a systematic understanding of the structure and the operations of a real economic system (...)"

(Wassily Leontief, 1982, p. 104).

Guru2001 07:59, 27 March 2007 (CDT)

Begin with a definition

Please, do see CZ:Article Mechanics; articles should begin with definitions. "Heterodox tradition" means something in economics; what does it mean? Anything more precise than "socialism"? --Larry Sanger 20:15, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

"heterodox" in the sense of a demarcation from the prevailing mainstream in Economics. It includes (but it is not restricted to) the various strands of socialism. For more information see: Heterodox Economics Journals (Scholarly) at Heterodox Economics WebJ. R. Campos 14:47, 22 April 2007 (CDT)

Begin with a simple definition.. Sounds easy...

While the subtext and group identities of "heterodoxy" are blurry around the edges and like a ven diagram include groups who overlap differently with the core ideas, we think a workable set of principles can be identified that constitute heterodox approaches to economics. Among the concerns we would put in the heterodox core are the following:

1) A substantive rather than procedural definition of economics, i.e., a definition of economics by its subject matter rather than by its techniques of analysis (e.g., constrained optimization). This concern de-privileges mathematics as a language and invites attention to the potential contributions of history, anthropology and other social sciences to economic analysis.

2) A concern with the nature of human well being, in broader terms than GDP maximization (HDI maximization ??)http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/, and an expectation that economic analysis will highlight how economic activities affect well being. This concern tends to emphasize the importance of topics such as income and wealth distribution, the quality of work life, the viability of community, and the requirements of sustainability instead of the de facto privileging of GDP maximization in neoclassical economics.

3) A concern with how economic activities affect both individual experience and the construction of society. This concern invites skepticism about the ability of methodological individualism to adequately analyze economic events and invites a more nuanced and potentially skeptical view of the merits of regulated and unregulated markets for organizing economic activity. The concern also invites analysis of capitalism as a social as well as economic system.

4) A concern with the ethical issues surrounding economic activities. This concern calls into question the oversimplified way neoclassical economists differentiate positive from normative economics, and encourages increased evaluation of economic outcomes from an ethical perspective.

5) A rejection of neoclassical theory's tendency to abstract from social contexts, be it with respect to institutional arrangements, human motivation (homo economicus), uncertainty and imperfect information, the assumption of perfect competition, the specificity of a monetary economy, etc.

J. R. Campos 16:53, 22 April 2007 (CDT)

Locke

...is a utopian socialist? Huh? --Larry Sanger 20:35, 22 April 2007 (CDT)

Humhum...

Locke also proposed a theory of property in his 1690 Treatises. The right to property, Locke claims, is derived from the labor of those who work it. More specifically, he perceives that as "labor" is naturally "owned" by the person in whom it is embodied, then consequently anything that labor is applied to, is similarly "owned" by the laborer -- a rather proto-Marxian notion. Locke's "natural labor theory of property" stands in stark contrast to that of Hobbes, who conceived of property merely as a State guarantee, and of Grotius, who contended that property emerges from social consent.

Yes, but none of that makes him a utopian socialist (of course!). --Larry Sanger 16:24, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

Let us agree that Locke is a proto-socialist. I have changed the section title to "Utopians and Socialists", for better clarity; actually it it is a timeline, begining with Utopia. I feel Locke's seminal positions on property are important to explain later authors, although they are not central to his work.J. R. Campos 16:40, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

The conventional Marxist view of Locke is that he was a proto-capitalist. In particular, his view of property is seen as providing the moral base for mercantilism and accumulation of money. This was important because Locke's philosophy is grounded in the Christian religion, in which moral framework the accumulation of perishable goods is a mortal sin. The invention of money, however, removed this moral obligation from mankind because money does not perish [alas] and with this sleight of hand, Locke was able to justify highly unequal income and property distribution. I fail to see either utopian or socialist thinking in his Second Treatise. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 16:56, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

But surely he's a proto-capitalist as much as a proto-socialist, because of his emphasis on private property and individual rights. --Larry Sanger 17:11, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

List vs. explanation of concept

This article right now, as useful as it might be, takes the form of a list of thinkers who, it is alleged (but by whom?), are part of the "heterodox tradition." But in virtually none of this is it actually explained what the heterodox tradition is--and what members of this "tradition" might have in common that warrant us calling it a "tradition" at all--and why it matters. It is also important, I should think, to detail any criticisms of this tradition, if there are any in currency.

I don't understand what the difference is between the heterodox tradition and socialism, broadly construed (...)

Let me try to explain in simple words: It is the same difference as between the "container" and the "contents". While all socialist currents are, by nature, "heterodox", not all "heterodox" currents are socialist. J. R. Campos 12:03, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

(...)The claim is made that "Leading heterodox thinkers have moved beyond the established paradigms of Austrian, Feminist, Institutional-Evolutionary, Marxian, Post Keynesian, Radical, Social, and Sraffian economics," but the article proceeds to give all sorts of Marxian, Radical, Social, etc., thinkers as examples. The implication, I suppose, is that contemporary "heterodox thinkers" have "moved beyond" these "established paradigms." It also doesn't explain how they have "moved beyond," a claim which I find pretty hard to believe, frankly. Intellectual fads in every field are all too often just recycled, repackaged, relabelled versions of the same old hash; I doubt economic thinkers are any different.

You are asking from me a level o competence that I do not have; you might. Initially this project was to be a "popular" encyclopaedia, a sort of "more precise and reliable" Wikipedia. Now I find myself pushed by you, a Ph.D. in Philosophy, to discuss ontological questions with. This is not fair. Nor it is fair the trying, by some, to transform the ontological difficulties inherent to the very heterodoxy to the reifying (and here the word is used correctly) of the existance of a subtext to promote "pressure" groups", in the article.

In questioning the nature of heterodox economics, I have advanced and defended four basic theses or contentions. These can be summarised as follows:

i) The nature of the enduring modern mainstream project which the heterodox traditions continue to oppose, and against which they must ultimately identify themselves as heterodox, is set not in terms of its substantive results or basic units of analysis, but according to its orientation to method. The mainstream project of modern economics just is an insistence, as a discipline-wide principle, that economic phenomena be investigated using only (or almost only) certain mathematical-deductive forms of reasoning.

ii) The often noted intellectual failings and limitations of this mainstream project arise just because its emphasis on mathematical deductivist reasoning is inappropriate given the nature of social material. In other words, the ontological presuppositions of these methods do not everywhere match the nature of social reality.

iii) The heterodox opposition is based on a (albeit often no more than implicit) grasping of the fact that the situation expressed in the just noted second contention is the case. In other words, modern heterodoxy is, qua heterodoxy, first and foremost an orientation in ontology.

iv) The individual heterodox traditions are rendered distinct from each other by their particular substantive orientations, concerns and emphases, not by theoretical claims or results, empirical findings, methodological principles or policy stances.

The perspective sustained will surely be contested, not least by those economists who prefer to view themselves as heterodox but who believe that mathematical-deductivist reasoning is desirable in itself. But in the absence of any more coherent or empirically adequate thesis on the nature of modern heterodoxy, the broad thesis advanced here does have something to commend it. In particular, the set of contentions defended allows, without any obvious tension, a way of distinguishing the various heterodox traditions collectively from the mainstream and individually from each other, in a manner that does not compromise their coherence as fruitful traditions in economics. (LAWSON, Tony. The Nature of Heterodox Economic, Faculty of Economics and Politics, Cambridge) - referred to in the article. J. R. Campos 13:54, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

Joao, I think we need to get some other economists and political theorists involved here; my feedback is not enough. --Larry Sanger 20:46, 22 April 2007 (CDT)

Do as you please. Curiously though, the Wikipedia, which Citizendium proposes to improve, did no stumble so badly on the "heterodox economics" issue; see their articles on the subject. I am throwing the towel.J. R. Campos 23:52, 1 May 2007 (CDT)

Editorial Opinion

Although I am sympathetic to many of the arguments made here, there are several issues which will not be acceptable to the vast majority of economists or to political theorists. They are as follows:

(1) The term "heterodox economic tradition" is not standard, and is therefore being reified by this article.

(2) The term itself is rather peculiar, in that although a case can be made that the authors listed are not part of the classical tradition, they do not constitute a coherent alternative tradition.

So why classify them together, other than to make a political point that they all opposed classical economic thought?

(3) The principal moving force, and primary reference point, for this article appears to be a pressure group known as Heterodox Economics Web. I had never heard of this group before, and despite my aversion to neoclassical economics, I am very reluctant to suggest that Citizendium should actively support this group.

(4) I suggest renaming the article, perhaps to Alternative approaches to economics. The links to the Heterodox Web are fine, in my view, but the recruitment of Citizendium in promoting their name is not ok. I have not looked in detail at the individual entries, but will do so when the time comes to approve the article. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 18:02, 26 April 2007 (CDT)

Do as you please, I am out of here. J. R. Campos 22:50, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

Is the term ""economic heterodox tradition" actually used anywhere outside of Citizendium?—Nat Krause 21:01, 1 May 2007 (CDT)

As far as I can tell, the phrase "economic heterodox tradition" does not appear on that site.—Nat Krause 20:47, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

I have been discussing the phrase "economic heterodox tradition". I take you have been discussing the phrase "heterodox tradition" in the context of economics? Regardless, I must note that the "heterodox tradition" does not appear on this page, either; it says "heterodox traditions".—Nat Krause 22:18, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

Next steps

I'm not sure where the latter list came from. Regardless, the question is not whether we can identify associations and professors as "heterodox" according to some definition, but whether the term "heterodox tradition" itself is in such common currency as to warrant our using the term uncritically. The term itself essentially asserts that there is something worth the name "tradition" here. That is, particularly if we merely and uncritically list off examples of thinkers in this alleged tradition, as this article does now, we are asserting that these thinkers together compose something that deserves the name "tradition." But, I suspect, very many economists are capable of denying this, and thus we are obligated by the Neutrality Policy to take that fact into account.

There is a more serious problem about the article, even if we are going to have an article titled "economic heterodox tradition." It is that the article is essentially a history of certain strands of economic thought. We want such a history, but we do not want the history to go under an idiosyncratic, but rather a neutral, name. I suspect that if we want an article titled "economic heterodox tradition," we ought to make it about this bit of jargon--what it means, who uses it, and so forth--and leave the economic intellectual history to another article.

What we need next from the Economics Workgroup--Martin, if he's the only editor on board--is a decision about exactly what to do. I doubt we should just leave this article as it sits.

João is free, of course, to leave if he wishes. But the threat of the departure of someone who doesn't get his way should not stop us from giving our honest judgment, if politely expressed. João, you must realize that this is a collaborative effort. Also, if you do remain with us, can you use just one depth of indentation within a single reply, and can you please refrain from chopping up other people's comments with your line-by-line replies? --Larry Sanger 16:52, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

Do as you please. I do not not work under censorship. All my comments have been removed; enjoy your own Editorial. Farewell J. R. Campos 22:54, 2 May 2007 (CDT)

A comment here was deleted by The Constabulary on grounds of making complaints about fellow Citizens. If you have a complaint about the behavior of another Citizen, e-mail constables@citizendium.org. It is contrary to Citizendium policy to air your complaints on the wiki. See also CZ:Professionalism.

Constable Intervention

Gentlemen, I have removed some content from this talk page for various reasons related to Citizendium's CZ:Professionalism policy. Please take a step back and realize that we are all here for the same purpose. I have no interest in content and my purpose is strictly to assure that we have a comfortable working environment for all. If there is a content issue, please refer back to the editorial workgroup for guidance. --Matt Innis (Talk) 22:03, 2 May 2007 (CDT)