ignorance and ideological hegemony: a critique of neo-classical economics
In what follows, the content and causes of Mayhew's and the Beeds’ articulated frustration is pursued. Recent literature on the production of knowledge and ignorance-squared is discussed and then used to investigate neoclassical economic knowledge. Subsequently, it is argued that it is fruitless to appeal to neoclassical theorists to become more methodologically pluralist or to enhance their rhetoric. It is concluded that, although a number of causes exist for the intellectual narrowing of the discipline, a fundamental answer to the query "why is this the case?" may be found in Gramsci's notion of ideological hegemony.
(...) Herein is pursued a somewhat different sociological question which is not how to come to know what one doesn't know, the form of ignorance acknowledged by Marshall in the quote above; but why it is the case that neoclassical economists don't want to be aware of what it is that they don't know, which is subsequently defined as ignorance-squared.
(...) To supplement this assertion, it is argued that neoclassical economists, as traditional intellectuals, cultivate the social production of ignorance in the struggle for ideas. This is done through narrow pedagogy, delineation of research parameters, and by constraining the production and presentation of non-neoclassical knowledge.
(...) Training in textbook economics and economic research systematically fosters ignorance-squared, in that students and researchers are shielded from any acquaintance with problems outside the domain of successful puzzle solving. The curriculum is always crowded with the positive heuristic of neoclassical economics; there is always too much to teach. There is never time for reflection, for perspective, for the cultivation of awareness, and most importantly, for the presentation of other contentious viewpoints, much less for the knowledge produced outside the disciplinary boundaries. When neoclassical economists restrict their own discourse, as well as their students’ ability to engage with others of the same, or related specialties, then "ignorance-squared", in the manner put forward by Ravetz (1993) is enhanced.
(...) There is nothing necessarily negative about the fact that we proceed through life unaware of most of what there is to know. What is argued however, is that neoclassical economists promote ignorance-squared.
(...) To illustrate, there are numerous reasons for promoting ignorance-squared. Given the search costs combined with specialisation, there is only so much time to devote to methodological issues. Therefore, the dominant paradigm will draw the attention of most scholars. Moreover, the more a system (of thought) is entrenched, and the longer the time it has been operating, the more difficult and expensive it becomes to change that system (Collingridge 1980). Likewise, the more a person has invested in the training required to be admitted to the neoclassical coterie, the more it is in that person's interest to prevent the depreciation of knowledge threatened by alternative modes of discourse. Another reason may be the appeal of elegant mathematically constructed neoclassical axioms. For instance, Einstein's theory of relativity became the standard textbook theory of gravitation in the 1920s. Yet, it wasn't until the 1950s that radar and radio astronomy became sophisticated enough to generate and test the theory via precise predictions with experimental uncertainties less than one percent. The general acceptance of the theory in the intervening 30 years had been largely attributed to its beauty (Weinberg 1992: 98), similar to the dominance of general equilibrium theory in economics in the second half of the twentieth century. Given the conceptual apparatus of ignorance-squared, let us now examine the production of economic knowledge that incorporates simultaneously, the production of ignorance.
(...) Neoclassical economists normally treat economic instability as the effect of exogenous, stochastic factors even though nonlinear economics suggests that what may previously have been considered exogenous, or random, may more likely be endogenous to capitalist social formations. As such, economic fluctuations are seen as created by the processes of capitalism itself (Baumol and Benhabib 1989; Savit 1988). This is certainly not a new idea. Marx, Keynes, Hicks, Harrod, Kaldor and Hayek all considered causes for instability which were endogenous (Zarnowitz 1985).
(...) The 'rational' consumer of the mainstream economist is a working assumption that was meant to free economists from dependence on psychology (Simon 1976:131; Tversky and Kahneman 1987). The dilemma is that the assumption of rationality as intertemporally optimising is often confused with, and regularly presented as, real, purposive behaviour. In fact, the living consumer in historical time routinely makes decisions in undefined contexts. They muddle through, they adapt, they copy, they try what worked in the past, they gamble, they take uncalculated risks, they engage in costly altruistic activities, and regularly make unpredictable, even unexplainable, decisions (Sandven 1995).
(...) In his work Arthur divides up the profession into two world views, the neoclassical and the 'new' economics: neoclassical economics is based on diminishing returns; 19th century deterministic dynamics approaching equilibrium; homogeneous factors; no externalities; and is structurally simplistic around the concepts of supply and demand. Alternatively, 'new' economics introduces increasing returns; is evolutionary; focuses on heterogeneity and externalities; and is structurally complex and ever changing (Waldrop 1992:38; Bak and Chen 1991). Most students graduate, only having come into pedagogical contact with the former worldview.
(...) We are left with the pre-eminence of equilibrium economics when the balance of supplies and demands on all spot and futures markets takes place simultaneously, (Hicks 1939; Arrow 1971; and Debreu 1959). In this purely competitive, certain, optimising world of general equilibrium, pure profits are zero. Before students are permitted to achieve this level of sophistication, they must first go through the partial equilibrium components of marginal cost and revenue relationships.
(...) More recently, Nitzan and Bichler point out (1995 454-455) that modern corporations are not even "acting as if" they equilibrate marginal cost-marginal revenue to maximise profits. Rather, they attempt to "beat the average". References to the "average" or "normal" pervade the business literature - from the analysis of stock performance, through the stacking of country growth rates and risk premia, to the ranking of corporate profitability. In these terms, according to Nitzan and Bichler, the primary goal becomes "differential pecuniary accumulation", through which the corporation seeks to control a "larger share of the societal surplus". Consequently, success has less to do with the intuitively convincing textbook equality between marginal cost and marginal revenue, than with the capture of external contested income, thereby redistributing the available social surplus.
(...) Change, not rest is the characteristic 'state' of capitalism. "The essential point to grasp is that in dealing with capitalism we are dealing with an evolutionary process that is in continual disequilibrium. It may seem strange that anyone can fail to see so obvious a fact long ago emphasised by Karl Marx" (Schumpeter 1976:82).
(...) As Mayhew, and Beed and Beed suggest, the exercise of ideological power drives a portion of the full non-neoclassical transcript underground, in this instance to less reputable heterogeneous journals. In mainstream discourse, the subordinates (academic workers and students) tend to reveal only what is "safe" and "appropriate"; that which is delineated by the dominant paradigm or its ideological purveyors. Total subordinate revelation is only forthcoming in student or worker newspapers or "less reputable" heterogeneous journals, all treated with condescending contempt by the orthodoxy.
(...) The proficiency shown in neoclassical tools, concepts and language becomes the hallmark of identification and quality. The Krueger Commission on Graduate Education, established in the United States to report on tertiary education standards in 1990, reported that department procedures "bias the selection towards good technicians, rather than good potential economists". This implies that graduate education de-emphasises creativity and problem solving as the student requires "little or no knowledge of economic problems and institutions" (Krueger 1991:1040-42). Consequently, ignorance is promoted as a qualitative manifestation of a "good economist". The result is that the dominion of organic intellectuals, representing a class position and propounding its symbolic representation, is solidified. In order to join this coterie one must accept and disseminate the ideological and political constituents of class power that it represents.
(...) Economics is constructed around more than subjective differences of epistemology, methodological preference or appreciation of elegant techniques; the differences at the core are also political. Neoclassical economics has represented, for two hundred years, the political self-representation of autonomous, self-subsistent, and self-interest-optimising individuals. The populist works of Friedman (1962) in Capitalism and Freedom, or the more adrenalin-pumping stuff of Ayn Rand (1952 and 1957) in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged provide adroit examples of the ideological and political content in the grasp of the "Invisible Hand". It is here where the connection between promoting ignorance-squared and ideological construction is entwined.
(...) "And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc?" (Marx 1976: 502).
(...) Questioning, wondering, doubting, revising and collaborating are all practices which Socrates and now McCloskey (1985) would proffer to those interested in expanding the breadth of our knowledge through communication. Yet, students, and many of their preceptors, do not know that they do not know that capital cannot be measured; that utility is metaphysical; that optimisation is non-falsifiable; that capitalism is inherently unstable; or that, as Ricardo discovered, when we say 'supply and demand' we are explaining nothing (Dobb 1975: 52 and 119). The incentive remains not to find out; or at the very least, not to recognise the numerous serious-minded non-neoclassical economists who take all of the above for granted! Rather, mainstream protagonists spend time proving to each other that what they are doing is what they should be doing; and then convincing the disciples that what they should be doing is what their mentors are doing, ie., producing "acceptable" knowledge. The entire process is justified from within by noting that economists are all optimising their utility functions (Becker 1975).
(...) A student may actually accept what s/he is taught as normal, even justifiable, as part of the social order. Another may reject the information as "unreal", "incomplete", "too abstract", "not relevant", or "not falsifiable" and yet have no "realistic" option to present as a critical counter-claim. In either case, to survive, to pass the course, to increase their potential material enhancement upon graduation, both types of student must internalise and become technically proficient with what is served up. At the level of ideas, this symbolic production and re-production of both knowledge and ignorance-squared is replicated, with or without conscious consent (Gramsci 1971:passim).
(...) By disseminating a paradigmatic discourse and the concepts to go with it as well as defining the standards of what is legitimate, a symbolic climate is created that prevents subordinates from thinking their way free. Thinking "free", is used in the sense that acts are dialectically interactive with intentions, neither consciousness nor action being "unmoved movers" (Scott 1985: xvii and 38-39).
(...) No matter how hard neoclassical economists try to drive away the world of complexity, it too continues to confront them. Yet, to the frustration of "heterogeneous" antagonists the neoclassical paradigm remains dominant, blatantly promoting ignorance-squared. Elegance and technique have replaced relevance. What has been shown herein is that the production of that elegance has involved the opportunity cost of simultaneously producing ignorance. Ignorance-squared is replicated amongst students given the social interests of those dominant in the paradigm. This process of producing ignorance becomes entwined with the promotion of ideology to the detriment of us all. McCloskey importunes the deaf, for dialogue with more relevant tributaries of the mainstream is not in the interests of those presently in control.