Introduction

Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself. Albert Camus1 The authors of this book are of the generation that came of age in the maelstrom of the 2008 global financial crisis. It was a crisis that came as if from nowhere, interrupting our teenage years and sending shockwaves reverberating around the world. On the news we saw worry and confusion about debt overhangs, credit default swaps and sub-prime mortgages. It was a first glimpse for us into a whole new world and a strange rite of passage....

Rediscovering liberal education

Chapter 5 sets out a vision of a pluralist, critical and liberal economics education. However, it also shows how higher education has been reshaped in ways which makes positive reform increasingly difficult and set out a number of practical reforms which could be implemented within the current system.

Economics is for everyone

This chapter argues that we need new political and economic institutions which are participatory, inclusive and accessible and sets out some ideas about how this can be achieved. These can be the catalyst for the development of a popular democratic culture of public participation in economic discussion and decision making.

Econocracy

This chapter sketches out the contours of econocracy, its relationship with the academic discipline of economics and how it has developed in the twentieth century. It then shows in more detail how democracy has been undermined and the idea of the citizen as an active participant in political discussion and collective decision making been lost.

Economics as indoctrination

This chapter uses evidence from a curriculum review of seven universities across the UK to show how the philosophy which underpins econocracy is being passed down to the next generation of economic experts. The curriculum review analyses 174 economics modules using the course outlines and exams to illustrate that economics students are taught to memorise and regurgitate a narrow body of subject matter not think independently or critically.

The struggle for the soul of economics

Chapter 4 details the history of how the discipline of economics came to be so narrow and the more recent student led movements to reform it. It also includes a critique of the new CORE syllabus.

Beyond neoclassical economics

This chapter makes the academic, educational, practical and political case for pluralism in economics. It uses case studies of macroeconomics, the environment and inequality, to demonstrate that academic economics must open up to new ways of thinking.