Evert Schoorl said:
> Dear Humberto,
> Can you post the link or the full article?
> Thanks,
> Evert

Here it is:

The New York Times
November 5, 2011

Wanted: Worldly Philosophers

By ROGER E. BACKHOUSE and BRADLEY W. BATEMAN

IT’S become commonplace to criticize the “Occupy” movement for failing
to offer an alternative vision. But the thousands of activists in the
streets of New York and London aren’t the only ones lacking
perspective: economists, to whom we might expect to turn for such
vision, have long since given up thinking in terms of economic systems
— and we are all the worse for it.

This wasn’t always the case. Course lists from economics departments
used to be filled with offerings in “comparative economic systems,”
contrasting capitalism and socialism or comparing the French,
Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon models of capitalism.

Such courses arose in the context of the cold war, when the battle
with the Soviet Union was about showing that our system was better
than theirs. But with the demise of the Soviet Union, that motivation
disappeared. Globalization, so it is claimed, has created a single
system of capitalism driven by international competition (ignoring the
very real differences between, say, China and the United States). We
now have an economics profession that hardly ever discusses its
fundamental subject, “capitalism.”

Many economists say that what matters are questions like whether
markets are competitive or monopolistic, or how monetary policy works.
Using broad, ill-defined notions like capitalism invites ideological
grandstanding and distracts from the hard technical problems.

There is a lot in that argument. Economists do much better when they
tackle small, well-defined problems. As John Maynard Keynes put it,
economists should become more like dentists: modest people who look at
a small part of the body but remove a lot of pain.

However, there are also downsides to approaching economics as a
dentist would: above all, the loss of any vision about what the
economic system should look like. Even Keynes himself was driven by a
powerful vision of capitalism. He believed it was the only system that
could create prosperity, but it was also inherently unstable and so in
need of constant reform. This vision caught the imagination of a
generation that had experienced the Great Depression and World War II
and helped drive policy for nearly half a century. He was, as the
economist Robert Heilbroner claimed, a “worldly philosopher,”
alongside such economic visionaries as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill
and Karl Marx.

In the 20th century, the main challenge to Keynes’s vision came from
economists like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, who envisioned an
ideal economy involving isolated individuals bargaining with one
another in free markets. Government, they contended, usually messes
things up. Overtaking a Keynesianism that many found inadequate to the
task of tackling the stagflation of the 1970s, this vision fueled
neoliberal and free-market conservative agendas of governments around
the world.

THAT vision has in turn been undermined by the current crisis. It took
extensive government action to prevent another Great Depression, while
the enormous rewards received by bankers at the heart of the meltdown
have led many to ask whether unfettered capitalism produced an
equitable distribution of wealth. We clearly need a new, alternative
vision of capitalism. But thanks to decades of academic training in
the “dentistry” approach to economics, today’s Keynes or Friedman is
nowhere to be found.

Another downside to the “dentistry” approach to economics is that
important pieces of human experience can easily fall from sight. The
government does not cut an abstract entity called “government
spending” but numerous spending programs, from veterans’ benefits and
homeland security to Medicare and Medicaid. To refuse to discuss ideas
such as types of capitalism deprives us of language with which to
think about these problems. It makes it easier to stop thinking about
what the economic system is for and in whose interests it is working.

Perhaps the protesters occupying Wall Street are not so misguided
after all. The questions they raise — how do we deal with the local
costs of global downturns? Is it fair that those who suffer the most
from such downturns have their safety net cut, while those who
generate the volatility are bailed out by the government? — are the
same ones that a big-picture economic vision should address. If
economists want to help create a better world, they first have to ask,
and try to answer, the hard questions that can shape a new vision of
capitalism’s potential.

Roger E. Backhouse, a professor of economic history at the University
of Birmingham, and Bradley W. Bateman, a professor of economics at
Denison University, are the authors of “Capitalist Revolutionary: John
Maynard Keynes.”