Permit me to congratulate Chris Hayes for having clarified a number of important issues and the folks at the TPMCafe for having realized (or perhaps not, for contingency always has a role to play) that staging a discussion about mainstream and heterodox economics would elicit a great deal of interest among practicing economists, other academics, and the wider public. Perhaps Clinton was, in the end, right about one thing (“It’s the economy, stupid!”)

And permit me, in addition, to make a couple of points pertaining to the ongoing discussion.

First, I agree with Paul Krugman on one issue: the decisions that mainstream economists make affect the kinds of analyses they conduct and the policies they promote. Absolutely. It is both things: the theoretical framework and the decisions that are made in using that theoretical framework. It it possible, at least in principle, to analyze such issues as exploitation or unequal power using concepts borrowed from neoclassical economics—although you still won’t get the theoretical and empirical richness that you’ll find in the Marxian critique of political economy and other heterodox traditions in economics.

But it is also the case that most mainstream economists choose not to analyze such issues even when in principle they could. In other words, no economic theory is so completely structured that the practitioners don’t have choices to make along the way. In my view, heterodox economic theories offer many more and more interesting possibilities for analyzing the causes and consequences of the injustices associated with capitalism but it is also the case that mainstream economists could use their framework to analyze at least some of those issues—and they choose not to.

The same is true with many current notions of science. As many participants in this discussion have pointed out, mainstream economists’ reliance on scientism often serves to rule out alternative assumptions (e.g., about individuals, including irrationalities, norms and values, and so on) and forms of analysis (including history, case studies, participant observation, and so on). But, again, not entirely: even in the name of science they could demand to widen the discussion and debate such assumptions and methods of analysis—and they choose not to. And heterodox economists have every right to remind people that even the minimal changes in mainstream economics in recent years--involving such things as imperfect information, strategic behavior, happiness studies, and so on--have long been discussed, debated, and utilized, in much more interesting ways, in the heterodox traditions within economics.

Second, mainstream economics is not just neoclassical economic theory and free market policies; it also includes Keynesian economics and regulated markets. The invisibile hand that eschews all government intervention to arrive at maximum individual and social welfare and, when there are “market imperfections,” the visible hand of the government to lead to the same outcome. Neoclassical economics and Keynesian economics or, more recently, new classical and new Keynesian economics—supplemented by some game theory and behavioral economics. My point is that when economics becomes identified with mainstream economics then it becomes limited to the choice between free markets and regulated markets, individual initiative and government programs, between emphasizing the freedom to choose and the importance of the constraints. That’s the poverty of economics.

And there’s so much more that could be discussed and analyzed, and is being discussed and analyzed by heterodox economists: increasing exploitation of workers, flows of surplus labor to CEOs and their hired hands, the effects of giant corporations, discrimination against women and ethnic and racial minorities, the political economy of war, and much more. The various traditions of heterodox economics emerged precisely because mainstream economists could not and would not focus on such issues, and join the discussion about devising alternative economic arrangements.