advanced pedagogical techniques: introducing the topic of exploitation

"The Intimately Oppressed": How to talk about exploitation in the classroom

 A few years ago, in a conversation one of us had with a fellow graduate student, the issue came to surface of how to approach certain issues that have become a mainstay of the mainstream curriculum over time. We were specifically discussing the issue of how easy it is to fall into the so-called "markets in everything" trap -- whereby you start thinking about how markets for everything from organs to healthcare could solve most of the problems of social inefficiency. But the issue is much more general than that, and exposing that generality is the topic of this post.

So when one of us was discussing how to approach the "markets in everything" issue, which is really quite widespread among the blogosphere (particularly Marginal Revolution, which has made a type of blog series out of the idea... but Greg Mankiw is also guilty of perpetuating the idea, not surprisingly), our friend made the point that, why not start from the other direction, and work your way back? Instead of beginning with the idea that everything should be marketized, begin from the idea and theory that nothing should be marketized, and then ask what would qualify something to be marketized. That is to say, we should expose students' inherent repugnant feelings about a market for body parts or healthcare from the start, and then work backward from there, adding in markets as a qualification of the general argument that commodification should not exist. (In fact, if you think historically, this is actually the way in which the debate occurred -- we didn't start out with a fully marketized society and we only got there from peeling off various layers of social-institutional control!)

It's simple, and it works remarkably well. Furthermore, such a logic can be applied to other ideas which are not easily raised in the classroom, such as the issue of class or exploitation. By starting with certain ideas of exploitation that are more easily recognizable to students (such as the treatment of women in the workplace vs. men), it becomes easier to identify general principles of exploitation that may be applied to workers.

Talking about how women have traditionally been discriminated against in the workplace is a clear example of exploitation. Or talking about how, when they were first integrated into the industrial labor force in the early 1800s, they were pulled from both directions -- into the home because of preconceived notions of women's place in a private sphere; and out to work because of the need to make enough money to feed their children and support their family; all the while not being allowed to vote -- shows vividly how gender norms shape capitalism and employer behavior more generally. The continued persistence and use of racism after formal political freedom had been established by emancipation is another example of using the tools of race or gender to strike at ideas and issues of class exploitation.

Similar arguments can even be made for immigrants. Here is an example of how one of us has incorporated gender into a story of industrial capitalism. We have found that through doing so, it then becomes easier to talk about exploitation in the workplace more generally, because now students have seen how management policy has affected women workers. It is just a small step (really!) from that point to then talking about workers in general.

we know what we're protesting

This Crimson article by Harvard undergraduates Rachel Sandalow-Ash and Gabriel H. Bayard from November 2011, addressing the fundamental issues underlying the Occupy Ec 10 movement, did not get nearly the amount of attention that it deserved. Published about a week after the walkout on Mankiw's class, very few sources on the walkout linked to it, instead choosing to focus on the open letter and Crimson editorial(s), which were good, but not very carefully articulated.

We think the exclusion of the Bayard-Sandalow-Ash piece is very unfortunate. The articles which Greg Mankiw chose to cite in this New York Times article "Know What You're Protesting" did not accurately portray the types of issues that most people who chose to walk out have with his course. It would have done more for discourse around the issue if Mankiw had actually spent time dealing with the substantive attacks, instead of largely arguing past the protesters.

For example, Mankiw chose to concentrate his Times article on the argument that economics is mostly a tool, not an ideology. In other words, Mankiw sees the standard introductory economics curriculum as introducing the student to a scientific framework in which students can approach any kind of problem related to public policy or current events. This is a very familiar argument to those of us who have taken an economics course or two -- the idea that we're equipping ourselves with tools to go out and change the world. Too bad those tools are stained with ideology. Let us explain

The issue which Sandalow-Ash and Bayard rightly point out is that the frameworks Mankiw presents are themselves value-laden and politically motivated. So while the efficiency-equity tradeoff seems to offer an analytical framework in which government intervention can be "objectively debated", underlying the framework is a market-centered approach that fails to point out how a more equal society, through promoting stability and long-run health, can help to promote efficiency. And though Mankiw goes to some length to present a consensus among mainstream economists about core issues such as the adverse effects of minimum wages and free trade in his book, both historical experience and a growing literature on these topics have already successfully taken on seemingly-unobjectionable tenets of neoclassical theory.

Overall, we strongly suggest you take a look at the piece by these two very intelligent and socially conscious Harvard students. This is where the Occupy movement's critique is truly located.

anti-mankiw links

1. If Greg Mankiw wanted to inform his readers about the "Profile of OWS", he might have gone for something that was a little less focused on the profile of one individual, and instead, posted this excellent analysis of the WeAreThe99% Tumblr by Mike Konczal. Konczal's article actually gives a breakdown of the different platforms the Occupiers take and then discusses what that means for understanding the overall shape of their politics. An excellent "profiling" if we have ever seen one.

The thing is, the article in the Nation to which Mankiw linked was not even intended to be a full profile of OWS per se. The article, entitled "The Audacity of OWS", about the different types of groups which make up OWS and how they are often going against the "grain" in their respective communities in order to speak up against inequality and its adverse effects on democratic process. In the end, the article is a celebration of their tactics and resilience in the face of all sorts of outside pressures.

What was Mankiw's intention in linking to the piece in the first place? Does he find it funny that the (now unemployed) teacher, who probably decided to get a Master's degree to increase his earnings potential, ended up focusing on puppetry? While it is of course difficult to argue where precisely Mankiw stands on any particular issue when all he does is link to a post, his past behavior gives us a pretty good idea of how bad his blog "reporting" skills are and what his attempted message is. We can only infer what he really meant, but one thing is absolutely certain: his attempt to give us an overview of who the Occupiers really are ended in abysmal failure.

2. We think that this article by Barry Eichengreen, posted by Mankiw the other day, is an excellent discussion of some of the dangers facing the European economy as Greece searches for a way out of its fiscal troubles with a new Prime Minister and as Italy averts a crash itself. But one crucial issue, often skirted by mainstream media, is the impact the crisis is having on the actual people living in these countries.

How will the European "dark days" affect working people? Louka T. Katseli, writing for TripleCrisis, observes how the huge pay cuts taken by public workers across Europe are affecting perceptions of the viability of a European "social democratic" model that is increasingly favoring the financial sector. We believe that Katseli has written an excellent essay on these issues in a way that brings to light the impact of austerity measures on the government's ability to supply people with, for example, basic health care and social security checks.