I don't particularly like economics but I feel like if I wanna articulate a communist vision for the future I need to be able to counter the 1 Billion dumbasses who took econ 101
What are some good resources to start learning?
WARNING: By the standards of most chapo.chat users I would be considered a liberal (and yes, that is saying something). Proceed with caution.
A lot of the things that right-wingers online attribute to "ECON 101" is bullshit and isn't even true in ECON 101 -- for example, libertarians are famously ignorant about externalities. A result of this is that many leftists dismiss mainstream economics as a discipline entirely without getting a representative understanding of it.
For that reason -- and there's a strong chance this will get me downvotes (EDIT: Apparently not. This place really IS full of libs!) -- it wouldn't be the worst idea in the world to take a look at an actual ECON 101 course, like Khan Academy's free courses on microeconomics and macroeconomics. The field of economics as it is taught in universities is not 100% bullshit, and there are plenty of useful concepts in there that apply even in heterodox economic disciplines such as Marxian economics. At the very least, when you go on to read more about economics, you'll have a better idea what they're talking about.
Probably the biggest problem with the kind of people who say "It's ECON 101!" is that their understanding of the world is completely ahistorical. They take one economics course and think "These equations describe reality with 100% fidelity and I don't need to question them any further!" without realizing that those equations have a history and rely on assumptions which are open to being questioned. (I feel like the word "undialectical" applies here, but like my disclaimer says, I'm basically a lib, so I don't know.) So, my biggest piece of advice is, don't get too emotionally attached to the first thing you read/watch about economics.
Probably the most important thing to remember when approaching the models taught in entry-level neoclassical econ courses (especially entry-level micro) is that the perfect competition and rational objective-optimizing agent assumptions do a ridiculous amount of the heavy lifting. Markets in real life often feature elements of oligopoly (or oligopsony, if it's a job market), strong EMH is a fairy tale, markets in equilibrium states (or equilibrium paths) are not welfare-maximizing, markets for commodified life essentials frequently feature highly inelastic demand, people are irrational and make decisions with incomplete information, stated preference is neither always transitive nor always endogenous (otherwise persuasive advertising wouldn't work!), local non-satiation implies people are infinitely greedy, and we're all dead in the long run.
I assume you're talking about the famous Kahneman and Tversky paper on prospect theory that punched a hole in expected utility theory?
K&T are my go to source for destroying Neolibs entire foundational worldviews. Throw in a little Godel, the failure of Logical Empiricism, and how Popper is just a sub-case of verificationism and you can watch the cracks appear in real time.
Thank you for the effort reply, this is kinda what I was looking for. I've watched a few lectures on youtube by heterodox economists but don't fully get the whole picture of what they're talking about and again part of my interest is just understanding the mechanics of economics. Are Khan Academy's courses good or do I need to drink the capitalist koolaid to get through them?
It's been a while since I saw the videos. Probably the biggest issue I could see leftists having with it is that first-year economics generally emphasizes marginal utility as an explanation of value, whereas Karl Marx (and, indeed, almost every economist in Karl Marx's time) subscribed to the labour theory of value. But a lot of the concepts are still useful independently of that, and it's a good idea to understand marginal utility if you want to argue against it anyway.
He doesn't spend the whole time going "AND THIS IS WHY COMMUNISM NO FOOD ARGLEBARGLE!" if that's what you're worried about. It's mostly just neutral explanations (insofar as it's possible for such a course to be "neutral" when teaching neoclassical economics), the same way he would explain a concept in math or science.
EDIT: See TossedAccount's and dan26dlp's replies to my comment for other things to keep in mind.
Econ 101, the standard economic theory you'd learn at most colleges, is worse than hot wet garbage. It ignores debt, it's based on models with no bearing on reality, and its only purpose is to justify rich people stealing from everyone else. Literally that's it. Mainstream economics failed the Great Economic Crisis of 2008 and made no substantive changes. What more proof do you need?
Learning it will damage your brain and your morality. Students who study economics literally make crueler, more selfish decisions.
To learn something that will actually inform you and help you make decisions about the world, you need to get familiar with heterodox economics like what they teach at UMKC. Here are some names and topics to get you started. Stephanie Kelton, Steve Keen, Michael Hudson, Richard Wolff, Bill Black, Warren Mosler, Bill Mitchell, L. Randall Wray. Many of them have their own blogs, they have interviews all over youtube etc. Keywords: MMT, neo-chartalism,
Stephanie Kelton is one of the best explainers of MMT. Check out her interviews, print or video, she's the best. She also has a recent book called The Deficit Myth that explains everything pretty well. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-economist-who-believes-the-government-should-just-print-more-money
Bill Mitchell's blog is one of the clearest discussions of MMT for current events and he posts regular quizzes for you to test your understanding. http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/
Michael Hudson is a god among mortals, we truly do not deserve him. He deserves to be more widely known on this site. Check out anything on his website or the many podcast interviews he's done. He ties everything in with US imperialism and takes it back to a historical perspective. He's written some amazing, easy to understand books.
MMT "primer", may be a little dry, maybe start with Kelton: https://neweconomicperspectives.org/modern-monetary-theory-primer.html
Sorry just too damn lazy to do the links properly. GLHF
do you know of any articles etc expanding on "Econ 101, the standard economic theory you’d learn at most colleges, is worse than hot wet garbage. It ignores debt, it’s based on models with no bearing on reality, and its only purpose is to justify rich people stealing from everyone else."? I've heard this before and would like to understand this critique more fully. (ik you linked to a bunch of stuff, but I mean more criticism of the econ 101 and less presentation of MMT etc)
Marx and Engles ( https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ )
I've watched a few of Wolff's lectures and find them a little repetitive , does he have any deeper stuff on Democracy at Work or youtube?
Some of his YouTube stuff is decent, but Capitalism's Crisis Deepens is snack sized essays that might be more useful.
Paul Cockshott has a nice youtube channel for presenting a deeper analysis of Marxist economic theory than many of Wolff's Democracy at Work videos and expounds more on the labor theory of value, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and the "transformation problem."
If you're interested in a very in-depth comparative theory analysis, I'd recommend Wolff and Resnick's Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian. Also agree with WhatAnOddUsername's suggestion to try to familiarize yourself with mainstream economics as well. Khan Academy's free courses appear to be far more tolerable than what I had to endure in my introductory micro and macro classes from my Koch brother-funded undergraduate econ program.
Here is a cool little intro resource that I though was really good, Ernest Mandel's Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory.
If you're looking to go beyond this and learn "how to Gosplan 21st century style" have a look at modern Logistics theory textbooks. Most of the cool stuff like predictive demand and decoupling production and distribution from the price system is happening there.
Start with Christopher's Logistics and Supply Chain Management for a short intro.
