Breaking the Spell
Marxist economist Richard Wolff is a favorite of mine. His Economic Update for April 13, 2020 (The Psychological Aspects of Today's Crises) consisted of a discussion with his daughter, a psychotherapist in Manhattan. In this blog I use their exchange as a means of understanding my own perceptions. Substantive economics has been made esoteric by both our vulgar materialistic milieu and (as Tess Frad-Wolff observes) the way the disciplinary pie of study has been carved up. If a student specializes in validating non-monetary/non-commercial relations they will likely not be able to use this knowledge for gainful employment. She theorizes that a massive piece of social psychology has gone missing but this exclusion is common to all of social and medical science. Richard hopes to expand the boundaries of his heterodox economic focus to increase understanding of the revolutionary possibilities of crisis. I've been at this for decades myself as a participant observer of culture(s)...