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?

  • WhatAnOddUsername [any]
    2·
    4 years ago

    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.

    • TossedAccount [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      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.

        • Mardoniush [she/her]
          ·
          4 years ago

          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.

    • drinkinglakewater [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      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?

      • WhatAnOddUsername [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        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.