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Leaving aside the thick/thin discussion, I wanted to comment on David 
Colander's view of economists in relation to the Amadae book. 
 
I dont know how exactly he would define the 'Rand connection' which here he 
defines in terms of something that Science and technology people find. But, 
the point that economists have had close links with structures of power and 
governance in society is hardly disputable. And these links are not simply 
because economists demystify social problems but more because they are best 
at disguising ideology as science. They can provide solutions to the 
problems of governance (which are fundamentally social questions) in terms 
that appear to be scientific and that enhance or protect the interests of 
the privileged in society. 
 
As for the rather naive notion that politics has nothing to do with it. 
That good objective scholars just go where the money is to do good 
impassionate research, this is flawed in more ways that can be summarised 
in an email. The history of disciplinary knowledge is testimony to the 
links between power, politics and knowledge construction. As for 
ideological commitment, it is not just something that one exhibits by doing 
this or that kind of work, but all work is ideologically committed, I would 
argue. To give an example, if in the presence of a genocide, a scholar 
continues to ignore discussing it, this is not ideological detachedness or 
objectivity, or being scientific -- but ideological, a confirmation of the 
status quo, or an assessment that its not my problem or it does not hurt 
me, or is not worth thinking about or analysing.  
 
In this specific case, it is not just that RAND had money and people there 
happened to do research aimed at promoting capitalist interests, but that 
there would be no such organisation in the same context that would in those 
times have had similar money to do left/socialist research, and this is not 
purely coincidental. The choice of tools or starting points is not neutral 
of interests or ideologies. That we begin from choice rather than 
provisioning (Julie Nelson, a feminist economist discusses the significance 
of a focus on provisioning) is not coincidental in the way that the 
conclusions from the analysis justify the outcomes as having occured due to 
rational choice on part of the agents, rather than the analysis being 
explicitly normative and aim towards provisioning for all.  
 
Moreover, the links between academic knowledge in the US during the cold 
war, and the capitalist interests is only to be expected. The systematic 
designation of any work that exposes the status of economics as the 
handmaiden (sic) of power, in its links to war and capitalism, as 
conspiracy theory, may in fact be the biggest conspiracy theory of them 
all! 
 
Nitasha Kaul 
University of the West of England 
 
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