File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-10-22.195, message 53


Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 12:22:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: M-I: New Institutional Economics/Academic Prospects for Marxists in US


On Sat, 19 Oct 1996, Kevin Cabral wrote:

> 	The "new institutionalist" economists that I have read all seemed
> to be strangely shaky on their positions. Some even can't be sure whether
> or not they like Keynes, or Marx the most; they seem to like neither in
> total, but tend to wonder whether somehow their systems cannot be molded
> together via workers cooperatives, but at the same time they hope for
> worker's cooperatives and acknowledge arguments about exploitation. This
> is the work of a pair who I've read two of their books; one is from Notre
> Dame, and the other I believe teaches, or used to, teach with Hans Ehrbar
> at Utah. Do you interpret institutionalism the same way as myself? Am I
> missing something about this tendency?

A lot of new institutionalists are quite conservative. Coase, the
godfather of the school, is deeply skeptical of the value of government
action, although he has no delusions about the imaginary glories of
equilibrium in the real world economy. Alchian and Demsetz are noted
defenders of private property. Williamson develops Coase's rather
condservative pgilosophy in a highly articulated way. Stiglitz wrote a
major critique of socialism, although not from an implacbaly hostile
perspective. But despite this pedigree, there are a lot of radical NIers,
like maybe the ones you mention.

What I like about the NI is that they do break free of the neoclassical
mode and insist on studying real world economics where transactions are
coistly (their main point), where there is no equilibrium, where markets
as well as government produce externalities. Moreover a lot of the tools
they used can be adapted for radical purposes, as Bowles and Gintis'
contested exchange analysis shows. 
> 
> 	Basically this brings me too my question for you Justin. As an
> ex-professor yourself, is this climate of anti-Marxism so bad across the
> country that you cannot teach anywhere? I have heard you say many times
> that your dream would be to teach. If Ohio State chucked you, for
> political reasons, does that destroy a career? Is the career prospect
> hopeless for would-be Marxist professors? Do you think that individuals
> like Fredric Jameson were able to get top positions at major universities
> because they happened to be in departments that "don't do anything useful"
> like Literature? Could one with the politics of Noam Chomsky actually be
> the chair of a History or Political Science department somewhere in the
> United States?

It's fairly likely that I will be unable to teach in a philosophy
department or political science dept, again. THere are a lot of complex
reasons for this. Marxism is deeply unfashionable. The stigma of having
been canned is a grave handicap. The market is unbelievably bad. In
addition, I am too old and too long out of grad school--I got my Ph.D in
'89; the big time universities only want fresh minted Ph.D's. I have
published so much that I intimidate smaller depts in teaching schools.
It's hard to say what's the most important factor. I might be able to
teach in a law school if I downplay the Marxism to get the job and until I
get tenure. Law schools hire more older people than humanities and poli
sci depts do.

People like Jameson and those Marxisdts who do have positions at leading
universities today faced a different situation. They got hired when
Marxism was more hip andw hen the job market was expnading. If I had come
out of grad school in '69 instead of '89 I would have a tenured job at a
better school than OSU today. I don't think being confined to "useless"
depts had anything much to do with it. 

There is no one one remotely "like" Chomsky, so it's hard to say anything
much about what his situation tells us. He's not a Marxist, of course. He
is a prof at a leading Phil and Linguistics Dept, hired back in the old
days when the market was great. His dept is leading largely because of
him: he is the top thinker in linguistics in this half of the century. He
probably couldn't teach history or political science because he is not
"properly credentialed": he doesn't havea  degree in those fields.
Publishing many important works in an area is insufficient to establsih
one's credentials as an expert in it: you need the right degree. It's
stupid, but there you have it. His politics are also far enough out of the
mainstream and his still sufficiently polemical taht if he were  a new Ph/D in
political science (C wouldn't really make the cut as an historian; he's
not a historian) and had written the sort of polutical things he had, he
would have difficulty getting or keeping a good job, or any job.

--Justin




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