The Econocracy

On the Perils of Leaving Economics to the Experts

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Pub Date 06 Jul 2017 | Archive Date 11 Sep 2019

Description

'Our democracy has gone profoundly wrong. Economists have failed us. Politicians have lied to us. Things must change. This fearless new book will help make it happen' Owen Jones

'An explosive call for change ... packed with original research ... a case study for the question we should all be asking since the crash: how have the elites - in Westminster, in the City, in economics - stayed in charge?' Aditya Chakrabortty, Guardian

'Utterly compelling and sobering' Ha-Joon Chang

A century ago, the idea of 'the economy' didn't exist. Now economics is the supreme ideology of our time, with its own rules and language. The trouble is, most of us can't speak it.

This is damaging democracy. Dangerous agendas are hidden inside mathematical wrappers; controversial policies are presented as 'proven' by the models of economic 'science'. Government is being turned over to a publicly unaccountable technocratic elite.

The Econocracy reveals that economics is too important to be left to the economists - and shows us what we can do about it.

'A rousing wake-up call from a collective of dissident graduate students ... technically assured, well-argued and informative' Robert Skidelsky

'If war is too important to be left to the generals, so is the economy too important to be left to narrowly trained economists ... thought-provoking' Martin Wolf

'An interesting and highly pertinent book' Noam Chomsky

'Our democracy has gone profoundly wrong. Economists have failed us. Politicians have lied to us. Things must change. This fearless new book will help make it happen' Owen Jones

'An explosive call...


Advance Praise

'A fearless call for change' - Owen Jones

 'An interesting and highly pertinent book' - Noam Chomsky

 'Utterly compelling and sobering.' Ha-Joon Chang

'An explosive call for change ... packed with original research ... a case study for the question we should all be asking since the crash: how have the elites - in Westminster, in the City, in economics - stayed in charge?' - Aditya Chakrabortty, Guardian

'A rousing wake-up call from a collective of dissident graduate students ... technically assured, well-argued and informative' Robert Skidelsky

'If war is too important to be left to the generals, so is the economy too  important to be left to narrowly trained economists ... thought-provoking' Martin Wolf 


'A fearless call for change' - Owen Jones

 'An interesting and highly pertinent book' - Noam Chomsky

 'Utterly compelling and sobering.' Ha-Joon Chang

'An explosive call for change ... packed with...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780141986869
PRICE £9.99 (GBP)
PAGES 240

Average rating from 1 member


Featured Reviews

‘The Econocracy’ is basically a modern-day re-telling of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, in which the shortcomings of economics – or rather neo-classical economics – are laid bare.

The book’s three authors - Joe Earle, Cahal Moran and Zach Ward-Perkins - all studied economics at the same time at Manchester University and all fell out of love with their course, coming to view it as “narrow, uncritical and disconnected from the real world”.

This led, in their second year, to their setting up the Post-Crash Economics Society for curricular reform, which ultimately evolved into an international network called Rethinking Economics (with 40 groups in 13 countries), dedicated to reforming economic education and democratising economics by transforming the subject “from a technical discipline into a public dialogue”.

The authors define ‘econocracy’ as an economics-based technocracy or a society “in which political goals are defined in terms of their effects on the economy, which is believed to be a distinct system with its own logic that requires experts to manage it”, and ‘The Econocracy’ represents not only their analysis of what’s gone wrong but also how this problem should be addressed.

This enterprise exhibits two paradoxes.

Firstly, it is claimed that the teaching of economics in UK universities represents a form of indoctrination, which militates against independent, critical thought. But if this is really so, then how were our three authors (and their counterparts in others institutions of higher education) able to escape that fate?

The answer seems to lie in what economists would refer to as ‘exogenous shock’: not only did they all come of age in the 2008 global financial crisis and embark upon Economics degrees in the vain hope that their studies would shed light on this phenomenon but when the Eurozone crisis occurred it wasn’t even mentioned in lectures, confirming their growing realisation that what they were taught was only tenuously, if at all, related to the economics of the real world.

Secondly, although Earle, Moran and Ward-Perkins present the language of economics as impenetrably technical to the layman, they succeed in making their own economic arguments wonderfully lucid.

They certainly make out a good case that there are serious issues concerning how economics is taught and what is taught, with neo-classical theory exhibiting severe shortcomings in addressing issues such macroeconomic stability, environmental change and inequality.

I would, however, have liked the critique to have been even more wide-ranging and better informed historically (although in their defence one of their complaints is the way in which economics is usually studied without reference to history, politics and ethics).

Thus whilst Earle, Moran and Ward-Perkins are correct in arguing that the economy as “an abstract concept … is a relatively recent invention” and that World War Two played a pivotal role in making economists indispensable experts, technocracy and the associated belief that the world is “characterised by knowable, predictable forces” stretches back to at least the late seventeenth-century Enlightenment and the roots of liberalism as an ideology.

Given the depth of these roots, it is difficult to be quite as sanguine as Earle, Moran and Ward-Perkins regarding the prospects for uprooting the econocracy.

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