A Teacher Writes to Students Series (55): Redeeming Inhuman Economics
Annavajhula J C Bose, PhD
Department of Economics (Retd.), SRCC, DU
Even as I was recently ruminating on the lamentation of Hodgson (2021) that the assumption of mainstream economics that individuals are no more than self-interested pleasure seekers undermines the importance of moral motivation and integrity, Google Baba has blessed me with the random discovery of Professor Kamran Mofid as the architect of Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative.
What Prof. Mofid says about remaking economics should be very instructive and endearing to undergrad econ students. You must read the first reference below, including all the links in it, A to Z. There are wonderful photos and expletives as well.
His true personal story, he shares thus:
“It was all about what it means to be human. I suppose it all started when I became a bit older and I hope wiser, asking fundamental questions of myself about what type of economics I was taught and indeed, what was it that I was teaching my students. Questions of values and substance. Questions surrounding the relationship between economics and ethics, spirituality, love, hope, kindness, empathy, wellbeing, happiness, mother nature, consciousness, and suchlike. Although, these questions began my journey of transformation, which with the hindsight I am grateful for, but, nonetheless, at the beginning of the journey caused my great deal of pain and heartache.
Let me explain a bit more, by formulating my story into a thank you note to the academic economists who made sure of my successful change and transformation!!! It is because of them that I am who I am now!! After being awarded my PhD in economics at Birmingham University, I embarked on my academic career in 1986. I started off as a development economist, (indeed the title of my PhD thesis was: Development Planning in Iran: From Monarchy to Islamic Republic) doing work on poverty, inequality, and equality, trade and development, mainly focusing on poor people in poor places and through some surveys I was doing, I fell into the economics of happiness and wellbeing, as well as the degradation of environment and its consequences on the Third World, amongst others. I also realised that what I had been taught in economics and what I was teaching my own students, were really fake, false and irrelevant to what was happening on the ground in the real world and the real people. I so much wanted my economics teaching to have a positive impact on my students’ wellbeing, their happiness and their hope for a better future. I wanted to change what was being taught at universities, and more so on how it was taught and communicated to students. Looking back, I must have been so naive believing I could do that! Many mainstream economists at the time believed that I was totally a nutcase, to be avoided at all cost! They told this to my face! They told me the kind of economics I wanted to teach had no place in how economics must be taught at a modern university in the era of Thatcherism, revolutionising everything we knew about economics and the economy! They told me, if I want to be so kind, caring and valuing the needs of the weak, vulnerable and disadvantaged, then, I should consider changing my profession! They told me I am more suited to become a social worker or perhaps a priest! Well, well, well! Looking back at my life, who I was, who I am now, and what I do, I say, thank you to all those fellow-economists that all those years ago encouraged me to jump their sinking and discredited ship!! For that, I cannot be more grateful!
Legend has it that, on October 31, 1517, the priest and scholar Martin Luther approached the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, and nailed a piece of paper to it containing the 95 revolutionary opinions that would begin the Protestant Reformation. He argued that the Church was internally consistent but absurd doctrines had pickled into a dogmatic structure of untruth. Around the early 1990s, I, too, felt the same as Luther did in 1517, but my quarrels were not with religious dogma or the church, but with the new religion and its fundamentalist and dogmatic priests, masquerading as neoliberal economics and economists, the ideology and the ideologists at the roots of our destruction. I had started to study economics as a mature, married student, who knew a thing or two, about life and the real world and very soon realised that what I was being taught had nothing to do with life or the real world. It was nothing but ‘ absurd doctrines pickled into a dogmatic structure of untruth.’ To this day I do not know why I did not change course and do something else, something more relevant and real. I persisted, did my BA, MA and PhD, all in Economics! Then, I became an economic lecturer, teaching the same absurd doctrines and dogmatic structure of untruth to my own students. By the early 1990s, the guilt of teaching a load of Mumbo Jumbo to these young and innocent souls who had come to me for truth and inspiration got too much for me. I was feeling guilty and depressed. I wanted to be good economist, not a voodoo scientist! To save myself from damnation, I became a full time academic activist and campaigner, a fully-fledged critic of mainstream economics and economic education as it is currently taught at universities the world over. It has been a very challenging, difficult and at times very painful journey for me. Similar to Luther who became a target of the Catholic Church, branding him a heretic and the Holy Roman Empire that condemned him as an outlaw, I also have felt the painful weight of the vested interest. Based on available and unrefuted evidence on the destructive ways of mainstream economics and economists, I know I was right to begin what I am doing and who I have become.”
For rediscovering beauty, wisdom, trust, elegance, imagination, hope and healing in Economics, Prof. Mofid lists out numerous books on reclaiming economics with moral agency, which you must read.
And, finally, he wants you to appreciate the ethos of the following two poems.
‘Some say that my teaching is nonsense
Others call it lofty but impractical.
But to those who have looked inside themselves,
this nonsense makes perfect sense.
And to those who put it into practice,
this loftiness has roots that go deep.
I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.’- Lao Tzu
Who is the Economist? A poem by DELLA DUNCAN
‘Perhaps to be an economist is a state of intention, attention, and connection.
The moment we glimpse the big picture, wholeness, harmony,
The moment we think holistically and systemically,
The moment we appreciate the contributions of all beings to our flourishing,
The moment we sense into the condition of our home managing, the qualities, the emergent properties.
When we feel the suffering, the joy, the dis-ease, and the hope coming through the tugs in the web of life.
To be an economist is to respond each, in our own way, with our gifts, our shadows, and our histories,
To live for a locus beyond oneself,
To act on behalf of the living whole for the flourishing of all beings.
To be an abundance manager,
An eco-sattva,
A life protector,
A life-enabler,
And above all, a humble member in the co-creation of our shared journey in this moment of this universe.’
To conclude, “Mainstream economics typically downplays or ignores questions of moral value. Anything but the most superficial discussion of ethics is typically absent from mainstream textbooks on economic policy or applied economics. Economists often mistakenly treat moral values as superficial, transient or preachy, and search instead for allegedly firmer analytical grounding upon self-interested preferences. For centuries, repeated warnings have been raised that an economics purged of wider and deeper moral considerations is blinkered, misconceived and potentially destructive. It is overlooked that economic activity and policy always depend on evaluative and moral judgments that derive through interaction in structured communities, rather than the preferences of separate individuals.”
References
Geoffrey M. Hodgson. 2021. Liberal Solidarity. Edward Elgar.
