The intellectual project on which mainstream economists were raised, and which still forms the backbone of textbook education, has disappeared. What remains is a pastiche of attempted patches, apologies, and corruptions of “heterodox” ideas, all peddled by exponents of an “orthodoxy” that lacks a theoretical core.
KASHGAR—In what is best read as a preemptive swipe at Isabella Weber’s new book, Anti-Fascist Economics, Jason Furman, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers during US President Barack Obama’s second term, recently offered the following half-truth: “the fatal challenge to heterodox economics is that there isn’t actually orthodox economics.”
