==================== 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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