==================== HES POSTING =================== 
 
Response to Ana Maria Bianchi: 
 
In the early 1960s U.S. intelligence planners developed the  
Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) model assuming that the Cold War would  
increasingly involve LICs and indirect confrontation through proxies  
as opposed to direct East-West confrontations; they noted that the so- 
called North vs South dimension of the Cold War (Rich vs Poor  
Countries) would increase in importance in the overall Cold War. 
 
The so-called Alliance for Progress and subsequent programs like it  
were characterized by their initiators as "social systems  
engineering" initiatives and programs. By "social systems  
engineering" they meant creating, mobilizing and utilizing inter- 
disciplinary resources and "scholars" to identify, delineate, factor- 
weight, analyze the critical socioeconomic, political, cultural,  
natural structures, processes, personalities, institutions of a  
target society so as to manipulate, engineeer and control those and  
other dimensions of the target society. These social systems programs  
involved/and still involve use of media, exchanges (military,  
educational, etc), aid, trade, critical technology transfers/denials,  
academic journals etc to control and manipulate in accordance with  
perceived imperial interests. 
 
Neoclassical economics, with its focus on "homo economicus",  
assumptions about the inherent inefficiency/stability of capitalism,  
its inability to handle or even deal with phenomena like racism,  
sexism, imperialism, power etc, with its focus on equilibria rather  
than chronic disequilibria, etc was an ideal paradigm in the service  
of U.S. imperial interests in the so-called "Third World". The  
limited parameters/angles/scopes of analysis, the metaphysical a  
priori assumptions about "human nature", the seemingly "scientific"  
yet meaningless tautologies, the focus on "free trade and comparative  
advantage" hiding some of the power asymmetries hiding behind  
trade/aid/exchange relations, all made the neoclassical paradigm an  
influencial instrument of social systems engineering and imperial  
power projection/consolidation. This situation remains today. 
 
The most powerful forms of censorship limiting the menu of  
contending ideas and perspectives are often self-imposed. Often  
cowardice, opportunism, toadying combined with ideological  
"gatekeeping" and career-making by the so-called "great names" in the  
profession lead to formal censorship and coercion being unnecessary.  
As in the entertainment or news media, so it is in academia that the  
spiral of "success" involves: 
 
                         l---->Name Recognition---->l 
                         ^                          l 
                         l                          l 
                         l                          V 
                       Exposure           Preferred Access 
                         ^                          l 
                         l                          l 
                         l<-------Big Hit <---------l 
                                Big Scoop 
                           Big Grant/Publication         
                            
There are many pathways into/out of the spiral of "success". For  
instance:  
Not asking nasty questions/ teaching taboo paradigms ---->access 
access (perferred references etc)---> Big Grant/Publication 
Big Grant/Publication---> Exposure--->Name Recognition--->...       
 
In the case of some economists like Friedman who openly worked for  
the fascist regime of Chile, their complicity in "social systems  
engineering" and fascism was analogous to a German chemist who uses  
his/her knowledge of chemistry to make Zyklon-B gas. 
 
Jim Craven 
Dept of Economics 
Clark College 
Vancouver, Wa 
 
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