Lecture
These notes on the limitations of economics allow us once again, continuing the arguments of hundreds of well-known scholars, thousands of lesser-known and simply unknown teachers, and tens of thousands of students, to draw a conclusion: for the successful development of economic theory in general, and especially in times of change, pluralism, equal standing, and dialogue among various theoretical schools must be the defining features, with an interdisciplinary approach predominating. In an era of change, a scholar (and his fellow teacher), as well as a student and any person wishing to gain professional command of questions of economic theory and seeking to find themselves, so to speak, "on the leading edge," must be capable of critically perceiving any established theories, of doubting axioms, must be open to dialogue with the new, and must be able to see the strange in the ordinary, familiar world (aesthetics has a very precise concept for this: "defamiliarization"; as Lewis Carroll put it: "Curiouser and curiouser").
Perhaps the only path to forming such a capacity — and, moreover, such a disposition — in a researcher is a many-sided, non-dogmatic education built on the principle of constant doubt, the search for points of interaction between different paradigms, and mutual critique. Applied to our topic, this disposition may be commented on as follows. First, what is dangerous (in particular, from the standpoint of the threat of losing the theory's openness and capacity for dialogue) is the dominance — indeed, an almost absolute dominance — characteristic of the current situation in economic science and education, of economics as the basic, universal system of knowledge and language, whose expansion, within the methodology of economic imperialism, extends not only to the whole of economic theory but to other social sciences as well. Parallels have become very common in Russia between the necessity of universal knowledge of "Marxism-Leninism" (in our recent past) and the necessity of universal knowledge of economics (in our present) as the foundation of any scholarly and pedagogical activity. One cannot fail to know economics, but is it not worse to know only economics? Meanwhile, a great many approaches lie outside the mainstream, and some are not connected with this line at all. The diversity of theories and their equal standing as a principle of science in general is hardly questioned by anyone. It is all the more strange, then (again, from a matter-of-principle standpoint), that Russia today (as, indeed, do most other countries) is characterized by an uncritical copying of American standards of economic education, with the absolute dominance of only one school.
But do we really need to reproduce this fading model? Second, it is of fundamental importance to emphasize the interdisciplinary approach and, accordingly, to pay the closest attention to those schools of economic theory that are most open in this direction, that address a subject lying at the intersection of various strata of social life, without confining themselves to economics in the narrow sense of the word. Economics, and the economic imperialism based on this direction, is not merely an emphasis on a narrowly economic approach, but the reduction of all spheres of social and human life to it. And if today's actual courses in micro- and especially macroeconomics include, in supplementary chapters, material from other disciplines, this is not an organic part of the mainstream as such, but merely a concession to the pressure of circumstances. In other words, it must be acknowledged that the subject matter of our theory and our education has long since gone far beyond describing the abstract foundations of how a market economy functions, which is the actual (rather than merely declared in the introduction) subject of economics. Third, the openness and dialogic character of theoretical research, and accordingly of the educational process, require the use of different methods and, no less importantly, different languages of science.
Just as it is impossible to conduct natural-science research in the language of theology, so too is it impossible to study the global economy of the period in which an information society is emerging and qualitative social transformations are taking place using only the language and toolkit of economics. Such research, such education, requires going beyond a single language and using the languages of various schools of economics and related disciplines. This applies even more strongly to the necessity of applying different research methods, for method neither was nor can be indifferent to the subject and content of a science. Finally, the most important task for Russian economists is the creative reappraisal of the achievements of native theory in critical comparison with Western developments. Here, by native economic thought we mean not only the works of Russian economists before 1917, but also Soviet political economy, whose content did not in fact reduce merely to an apologia for "socialism." This, however, is a separate matter requiring dedicated study. In sum, research and education in economics that are adequate to the "challenge" of a qualitatively changing global world require genuine equality and dialogue among scientific schools, languages, and methods. Without this, a modern specialist or analyst will be unable either to develop or to conduct fruitful research, especially of a fundamental nature.
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