Word: ec
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Some people have assumed that Ec 1 is a "liberal" course because it teaches Keynesian theory of national income. However, we would like to suggest that there is nothing "liberal" or "conservative" about Keynes as taught in Schulze or Eckstein. Most businessmen accept the idea that the government should use fiscal policy to keep growth up, although they would oppose its use as a social tool. Keynesian analysis as taught in Ec 1 is neutral ideologically. For example, one may increase government expenditures by digging and refilling ditches, by increasing defense spending, or by building schools and low-cost housing...
...last section of our critique has to do with a subject which is naturally of special concern to one of the groups preparing this critique, and of great interest to the other. This is the treatment of democratic socialism in Ec 1 readings. However, this should not merely be viewed as a special interest plea. Governments professing democratic socialist beliefs are in power through free elections in almost twenty countries in the world, including many of the most important countries in Western Europe. Although the systems currently existing in these countries are not socialist at the moment, democratic socialist governments...
...actual organization of the American economy is a subject which is very blurred in readings in Ec 1. What are the relative roles of the competitive and the oligopoly sectors? Caves tells us that "markets with few sellers play a prominent role in manufacturing in the American economy," but there is no discussion anywhere of the revolutionary implications this has for the whole market capitalist system, of which price competition formed the leading ideological-economic justification. Nor is there any controversy over the role (as distinguished from the market conduct or performance) of the corporation in the modern economy. Readings...
...seems to us that the whole question of "second best" is not sufficiently treated in Ec 1 readings. If the assumptions of the perfectly competitive market such as perfect information and so forth do not hold, how do we compensate for this, and what is the second best alternative to the ideal competitive market. It is by no means certain that it is micro-economic laissez-faire...
...Ec 1 readings do discuss "socialism," but confuse socialism with nationalization of industry or with the Soviet system, which no democratic socialist would call a socialist system at all. While capitalism as an economic system is identified in readings such as Dorfman and Friedman with liberty itself, socialism is viewed merely as a technical economic question of government ownership. "By reducing the term to a simple description of a way of organizing an economy," notes Michael Harrington, a democratic socialist, "the meaning that the socialist movement itself (gives) to its ideal (is radically narrowed). In Western European history and, above...