For an Alternative Economics

Ashok Mitra, the acerbic former CPM Finance Minister on alternative economics:

Economics in its early phases, was intended to further the wealth and welfare of people. Classical political economy — as developed by Adam Smith, and then by David Ricardo and, in the final round, by Karl Marx — did not deviate from the objective. Adam Smith directed his ire against those masters who exploited their employees; that is why he favoured free competition which, he hoped, would restrain the monopolists.

Ricardo’s principal campaign was against the landlords whose precepts and policies retarded economic growth and thereby stifled the welfare of citizens at large. Marx, of course, travelled the furthest and strove to prove that whatever production takes place in society is the exclusive contribution of labour, both direct and ‘embodied’ in capital; the fruits of such production should therefore belong in entirety to the working class.

It is time for an alternative economics, an economics which would be much more faithful to its classical roots than what is preached by the vandals at large, blabbering about general equilibrium.

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