ABSTRACT
By 1970 there were over 15,000 American economists, most of who were neoclassical economists and belonged to the AEA. Because of the repressive dominance of neoclassical economists and because of the pre-and post-war repression of heterodox economics and economists, neoclassical economists shared membership in a tightly knit hierarchically-arranged community. This community accepted a single relatively homogeneous body of ideas or theories, shared the same set of standards-theoretical, technical, and empirical-for evaluating research and hierarchically ranking publications, engaged in a network of inter-institutional and interpersonal ties that promoted communication, reciprocated employment and conference participation opportunities, and rejected or suppressed all else.1 Clearly, the neoclassical community circa 1970 institutionalized the anti-pluralism, red scare-repression, and the McCarthyism values of the previous seventy years. But it did more; it institutionalized what can be called “thinking like an economist.” That is, to think like an economist is to use chains of deductive reasoning in conjunction with neoclassical models to help understand economic phenomena. It includes identifying tradeoffs in the context of constraints, tracing the behavioral implications of some change while abstracting from other aspects of reality, explaining the consequences of aggregation, and using equilibrium as a theoretical organizing concept. To violate this neoclassical creed, to not think like a neoclassical economist, is not to be an economist at all. Fortunately for neoclassical economists, most students that entered the Ph.D. programs in the 1950s to the middle 1960s were intellectually incapable of critically reflecting on what “thinking like an economist” should be. Lacking a free intellect and having a mind never opened to alternative theoretical approaches, these economics graduate students could only pursue truth where their professors let them. Ironically, this made them (and only them) perfectly fit for membership in the economics academic community. The homogeneous nature of the body of theory held by the neoclassical
community was revealed in a survey of the present state of economics that was published in 1970 (Ruggles 1970a). In the survey, the discipline was
defined in terms of understanding how the economy operated; and, by completely ignoring the existence of heterodox economic theory, this understanding was conceived solely in terms of the mechanisms by which scarce resources were allocated, prices determined, income distributed, and economic growth took place. Moreover, it was argued that the economic theory which delineated this understanding provided much of the unity of the discipline. And within economic theory, it was microeconomic theory, as represented in terms of core tools and models in Table 1.1, which was the central core on which economics as a whole was based. Finally, it was argued that “The acquisition of this understanding has been cumulative, and there now exists a well-established core of economic theory and an economic accounting framework which provides the economists with his basic working tools” (Ruggles 1970b: 11). The survey faithfully reported the existing consensus among neoclassical
economists as to what constituted economics and the usual standards of honest, unbiased scientific work. Thus, any negative criticism in terms of not examining important and pressing social-economic problems, of the esotericirrelevant nature of economic theory and its mathematical models, and of the conservative bias of neoclassical economic theory and neoclassical economists or suggestions that economics needs to be completely rebuilt on a different theoretical foundation was met with forceful, denigrating rebuttals, snide comments (such as that critics rarely seem to do any real research), and the claim that nearly all was right with economics. So, as a community, it is not surprising that neoclassical economists felt that heterodox economists had a faulty understanding of neoclassical economic theory, were technically deficient and their theories technically inferior to neoclassical theory, and held ideologically-slanted political and social values that led them to accept out-dated and erroneous theories and at the same time prevented them from understanding how markets really worked and from doing any real research.2 Of course the irony of this attitude was that the concurrent capital controversy showed that neoclassical economists had a faulty understanding of their own theory. In fact, by the late 1960s, neoclassical economists seemed to be very much on the defensive as some graduate students were asking them impolite questions such as “please define capital” and they resented it. Hence, it is not surprising they would lash out stating that heterodox theory lacked scientific rigor and was non-quantifiable, while heterodox economists “pandered to the prejudices and abilities of dumbbells, who can’t understand any other variety” (Bronfenbrenner 1973: 5).3 Thus, if heterodox economists and the mush they called theories were to be taken seriously, neoclassical economists argued, they would have to become more neoclassical in language, technique, theorizing, and style; and if they refused, then their tenure as academic economists should be brought to an end and as a result their theoretical mush would deservedly disappear from economics. Given this intellectual climate, by not accepting the terms offered and, at the same time, persisting in developing an alternative theory, open-minded,
inquisitive economic graduate students (heterodox or not) as well as outright heterodox economists faced intellectual bullying, hostility, rejection, if not outright reprisals in terms of fewer academic appointments, limited tenure and promotion prospects, fewer publications, and denial of access to sessions at the annual conference of the AEA4 (Siegfried, et al. 1991; Weintraub 2002; McCumber 2001; Heilbroner 1970, 1971; Eagly 1974; Ruggles 1970b; Leontief 1971; Schultze 1971; Gurley 1971; Olson and Clague 1971; Tobin 1973; Blackman 1971; Heller 1975; Lindbeck 1977; Bach 1972; Bronfenbrenner 1970b, 1973; Solow 1970a, 1970b, 1971; Sowell 1993; Reder 1982; Lebowitz 2002; Hunt 1972; Meranto Meranto, and Lippman 1985; Shapiro 2005). In spite of the changing social and political environment and the rise of
the New Left in the 1960s, American economic departments largely maintained an anti-radical, anti-protest feeling, along side its pro-free enterprise position. In particular, unlike professors in English, philosophy, history, and other disciplines, most economists did not become involved in civil rights and anti-war activities on campus. Rather it would seem that they accepted to some degree the anti-civil rights, the non-existence of racism, anti-communism rhetoric that permeated society at large.5 Moreover, they believed that neoclassical economic theory and its applications to the real world should be accepted by students without question or discussion. However, some students found it sterile and innately conservative. So they doubted and questioned the theory only to be slapped down by the professor with denigrating phrases, such as “perhaps you should study neoclassical theory and learn it thoroughly before you criticize it” or “if you continue to have these doubts about the theory, perhaps you should drop out of economics.”6
Undaunted by the intolerant atmosphere in the classroom, they searched elsewhere for readings and syllabuses in economics that would be fresher and more challenging than the one they were using. They found Sweezy and the Monthly Review; and the Marxist organizations contacted were happy to respond. But these efforts did not undermine the restricted approach to economic presented in the theory classes. These conservative, intolerant, anti-pluralistic attitudes held by neoclassical economists in nearly all economic departments (and in the neoclassical community at large) towards doubts, criticisms, and the movement combined with the dominance of neoclassical economic theory in terms of teaching, research, and disciplinary status made it difficult for radical-Marxist, social and Institutional economists to obtain academic appointments in the period of high demand for academic economists the 1960s to the mid-1970s, especially at Ph.D.-granting institutions.7
