By the postwar period the anti-classical revolution (curiously termed neo-classical by its participants) had carried the day. Its major textbook of indoctrination was Paul Samuelson's Economics.
In Mr. Samuelson's case the trade policy that follows from his theoretical doctrines is laissez faire. That this doctrine has been adopted by most of the western world is obvious. That it has benefited the developed nations is also apparent. However, its usefulness to less developed countries is doubtful, for underlying it is a permanent justification of the status quo: let things alone and everything tends to reach "equilibrium." Unfortunately, this concept of equilibrium is probably the most perverse idea plaguing economics today, and it is just this concept that Mr. Samuelson has done so much to popularize. For it is all too often overlooked that when someone falls fiat on his face he is "in equilibrium" just as much as when he is standing upright.
Mr. Samuelson's theories can be described as beautiful watch parts which, when assembled, make a watch that doesn't tell the time accurately. The individual parts are perfect, but their interaction is somehow not. The parts of this watch are the constituents of neoclassical theory that add up to an inapplicable whole. They are a kit of conceptual tools ideally designed to correct a world that doesn't exist.
The history of economic thought has not resembled that of physics, medicine, or other natural sciences, in which a discovery is fairly rapidly and universally acknowledged to be a contribution of new objective knowledge, and in which political repercussions and its associated national self-interest are almost entirely absent. In economics politics rules at least as much as science.
Economics is really "Political Economics" because, completely disparate schools promote opposing theories based on contradictory assumptions. In economics alone the irony is posed that two contradictory theories may both qualify for prizeworthy preeminence, even as they displease schools and nations on theoretical grounds.
Thus, if the Nobel prize could be awarded posthumously, both Ricardo and Malthus, Marx and Marshall would no doubt qualify, just as both Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman were leading contenders for the 1970 prize.
Excerpted from Michael Hudson @ Counterpunch
