Special issue on Radical economics

Citation

(2008), "Special issue on Radical economics", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 35 No. 8. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijse.2008.00635haa.001

Special issue on Radical economics

Article Type: Call for papers From: International Journal of Social Economics, Volume 35, Issue 8

There are two obvious senses of "radical" economics. Literally, the term implies searching for the roots of the subject and then attempting to create a new viewpoint from there. More ordinarily, perhaps, the term suggests a basic break with the orthodoxy of a given moment. For the purposes of this special issue, we are looking for papers, about economists and theories that are radical in both these senses.

Some names come to mind at once: Proudhon and Marx, for instance. Proudhon remains interesting not least because he proposed an alternative to a money economy; something which might be possible given current powers of information storage and transfer and means of communication, which allow people to negotiate (at least in large groups) about what they want and what they are willing to do for it. The combination of state capitalism and political authoritarianism that came to be called Marxism-Leninism never had much to do with what Marx actually wrote. As a concept, it is now virtually dead. However, problems posed by the Marxists live on. The tendency to ever larger groupings of economic power and the persistence of "colonial economies", in which people produce for profitability of the developed world rather than for the purposes of consumption (whilst consuming what other countries send to them), are good examples. So "Marxism today" and "Proudhon today" are possible topics.

Other names may be arguable and we are happy to look at such arguments. For instance:

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  Were Léon Walras (often compared to the Fabian socialists) and his (surprising) admirer Josef Schumpeter (who spoke of "creative destruction") radical economists?

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  Was John Kenneth Galbraith a radical?

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  Is perhaps John Maynard Keynes now to be considered a radical and not the centre of orthodoxy? (In our terms, von Hayek, once a radical, now seems near the centre of orthodoxy, so where does that leave Keynes?)

Henry George has been appropriated for another special issue, but Gandhi may not have been exhausted by our special issue on India.

Authors are free to make their own suggestions and also to write about just what radical economics might consist of in our times and about its prospects.

The submission deadline for this special issue is 31 August 2008 but earlier submissions are welcomed. Manuscripts should be sent electronically by e-mail (in Word file format) to: The Publisher, Adam Smith, e-mail: asmith@emeraldinsight.com