Thread by @matthewstoller

1. This is an excellent piece by @zachdcarter on economist Joan Robinson and how she helped restructure how economists understand competition to include buying power and employer dominance. A few nitpicks. nytimes.com/2021/04/24/opi…

2. My critique is that this is too economics focused. At first, the piece says that Robinson helped innovate within economics. Then the piece says Robinson helped restructure "our" understanding of competition.

But who is we? Not Americans. They already knew what Robinson said.

3. As early as the 1820s or 1830s, American labor organizers and farmers were making these arguments, in various forms. By the Sherman Act debates, in the 1890s, the idea of concentrated capital hurting farmers and workers was obvious to everyone. So why is Robinson an innovator?

4. The reason is because the radical tradition of American political leaders - who basically never listened to economists until the 1930s - has been airbrushed out of our memory by the economists establishment.

5. Robinson, and Edward Chamberlin who developed this theory at the same time she did, are best understood as rebels from within a rotten and corrupt economics establishment that emerged to suppress our radical anti-oligarch tradition.

6. In many ways, economics that we know today - the nerdy oligarch servant class - was created in response to Henry George's Poverty and Progress, a 19th century best-seller (today it's best known as the inspiration for the board game Monopoly).

7. Keynes himself lauded American populist farmers for their sub-treasury monetary ideas. What he - and Robinson - did was institutionalize obvious political philosophy into economics. This matters, because the most important less to take away is ... get rid of economists!