November 25, 1974

The _recession is a radical' s depression ,- WHILE ORTHODOX econo radical's turn, says visiting eco ed me:it, the conventional econom characterize modern capitalist mists have watched the U.S. slide nomics prof Steve Marglin. ic wisdom has clearly shown it society, the orthodox remedies are into recession, radical econo Radical economists like Marglm self to be impotent in dealing with "palpably wrong", he says. mists who claim they can get the don't claim to have all the an- - the current and unprecedented ex Margi in . is on leave this _ year country back on -its feet are being . swers, but _ they do claim a right treme combination of inflation -and from Harvard, where he is the muzzled by orthodox university 'to equal billing at universities, unemployment. And when it comes economics department's only ten economics departments. If the the only approved training ground to the problems of urban decay, ured radical. But he received his U.S. sinks, Canada will surely °for economists. After all, says worker alienation, imperialism, appointment only after doing work follow, g~es the theory. It's · the Marglin, ove~ a Ben's lean smok- sexism and all the badisms that in the orthodox tradition and before his ivy league colleagues realized that his politics and his research had tak en a turn to the Left. He's convinced that if he was up for tenure today, he wouldn't get it, and he has the experience of sev eral other radicals to back up his conviction. If Karl Marx himself was available, he wouldn't be rec ommended for tenure, he says. ' It's not so much a question of ill-will on the part of the people at Harvard, he continues. "It's Kids ain~t readin' no inore more a question of their lacking the ability to j udge the quality of work outside their own model." CHILDREN ARE NOT reading is an obvious link between that Even with the best of will they are any more, and according to Sir fact and the rise of the mass at best· only superficially familiar media coupled with the decline of George English prof Henry Beis with the radical's . position, he reading. sel, "rejection of reading is eq ui says. valent to rejection of thinking." "It is man's natural disposi Nor is Harvard alone in its re tion," he goes on, "to do that Beissel , himself an author of sistance 10 unorthodox economists. several children's books, is es which is• easiest and involves the There are only two or three radi pecially conscious of their read least amount of effort. I'm taking cals who, like · himself, received ing habits. And "a trend away about inertia. AncL-it happens to tenure before changing their poli from reading in' children does de- be easier to turn on a TV than to Why does he see the printed tics or wno were installed as part finitely exist..~ · open a newspaper or a book and of a token response to student de Confirming the fact is , the re word as tne only medium that can read." · save our collective mind? Will Electronic media he sees as 'a mands in economics <departments cent cancellation of Young Cana elsewhere, Marglin maintains. electronic media be able to as vehicle allowing people to " make da Book Week by the Canadian But · University of Massachu sum e a role? nois·e just to conceal the fact that Libraries Association because of setts 'at Amherst has put together Apparently not,- he answers. behind the noise there is nothing." lack of response. an economics department with " That's evident in universities to In one sense, Beissel attributes But at the same time, books s< veral radicals. Marglin, who is day. Children born in the early the fact of children turning away are being bought in · increasing also a visiting prof at Amherst, fifties, when television first_ hit from language to their perception numbers, says Beissel. "We're says it's the. first chance radicals the mass market, are of univer- · that it is, being horribly debased. turning our trees into books so have had ·· to get together to de sity age now. And everyone is " Politicians, advertisers and their Iast we'll be living in a desert velop their theory. soon. What's happening is that a_ aware of the catastrophic decline ilk use language to conceal or in literacy. People taking courses distort rather than to reveal, and Marglin has come to accept the smaller number of people are radical label, but he says that no here - even the English students children can see the insanity of reading more and more." continued on page 2 The problem is urgent · enough, - don't know how to write· a gram that. If that's the modern applica in Beissel's view, that he and matical sentence. They can't ar tion of language, I'd almost say some of his colleagues are se ticulate in speech either: There -they are right in rejecti~g it." riously asking themselves, "whit kind of society will we have when reading disappears?"- A _thinker's noggin rub He tries to answer his own -question by looking at patterns WHEN THEY SET UP the Inter countries, · snowing dramatically that are developing today. national Monetary Fund (IMF), that nice guys come last._ "He was "Every human achievement," they found there _would always very angry," says Brendan Cava The Costofliving he points out, "stems from self- be one enterprising type who naugh, philosophy prof and head of This is the costofliving - $$ - discipline, from devotion to a par would set up a dictatorship and the Loyol =ii Interdisciplinary ticular value. The problem today run the whole show. And all the Studies (IDS) Thinking program. This is the retailer is that there seems to be no value national leaders who were friends But it was only a game. That raises the costofliving. to devote oneself to, and self with this guy would set them- - Cavanaugh started to thin~ This is the wholesaler discipline is dead. Value itself has s< Ives up around him and do very thinking several years ago in the been devalued." That soaks the retailer well themselves. · days when logic was thought to be That raises the costolliving. The result: "A · submergence of Then there was this other guy the most instructive way to get society in egotism. We don't re who ran his country like 1Honest people thinking. "But logic doesn't This is the packer late to each other as human be Harry and got burned by other teach you · how to tbink." It's That sticks the wholesaler ings. The pressure is to look simply a method - one of many, That soaks the retailer after oneself." And what this in he says. It was after a spell at the That raises the costofliving. tum leads to, says Beissel, is a Center for Cognitive Development slide into total cultural insigni at Washington's Catholic Univer This is the stockman That charges the packer ficance. We're becoming what an SPREAD sity when, Cavanaugh began to for cient Greece was for· a· thousand That sticks the wholesaler mulate his thoughts on, not Just That soaks the retailer years after its hey.day: a cultural how to think, but on the nature of That raises the costofliving. wasteland. "Our collective mind thinking itself. So be ran h}s is failing." 1hinking course in - conjunction This is the farmer To what extent does the sur wi1h his own philosophy.classes. That stings the stockman vival of society depend upon the That charges the packer There's something meaningful After a while the course began printed word? That sticks the wholesaler ' behind these running -shoes. And to blossom on its own. "The dean "Man," he replies, "has That soaks the retailer there's mo"re than running shoes: accepted it as a special thing," proved able to survive without That raises the costofliving. there's the lady who works with says Cavanaugh, who was thrown literature, b'-!t something of what body stockings, the wall rubber in with other courses that didn't In Other Words by Franklin is essentially human is contained in Berlin and more. Page 3. seem to fit the normal structures P. Adams, Doubleday 1912 in language, anq will diminish if m what was at first the hodge reading does." continued on page 2 THINKERSfrompage I parents of the apprentice to go podge known as IDS. Later he was through the long process of Keeping in touch joined by 'teaching assistant and '. showing' how the job was done. gamesmaster Paul Gardoki from Cavanaugh says non-verbal Testing the indisciplinary strengths of Cavanaugh's thinking Michigan State · University. (Gar types are impatient with the kind program has produced some strange combinations. One, for in doki has since put the crunch on of games functions that the think stance, figured a political science student who was of Greek ori dictato; ships, by the way, in es ing group are currently doing. gin, wanting to find what the differences and connections were tablishing ~ rule that dictator "It's just a game to them." between the Roman arid Greek Orthodox churches. ships can't be set up where the Cavanaugh would like to see a Thinking (or Mental Techniques) But the thinking man is working - 400 course introduced so that students who have left the univer IMF is concerned. Ho~est Harry on a model that will include prob was saved by his gamesmanship sity can return for a ten credit stay to work on other indiscipli lem-oriented thinkers.

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