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Economics 999 and “the Monday night club problem”

Summary:
From Edward Fullbrook In 1965 in Berkeley, California the New Left came into existence by finding a solution to what its founders called “the Monday night club problem”, a problem remarkably similar to the one that decade after decade emasculates “heterodox economics”.  In Berkeley there were numerous left-wing political groups, each based on a different set of underlying ideas, texts, and key terms, and that by long tradition met on Monday evenings.  Each of these groups had its own informal hierarchy of members and its own way of describing and addressing political issues.  Each group also provided valuable social support and intellectual enhancement for its members.  But when it came to changing things, of having any real-word effect, they were no less powerless than bridge clubs.

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from Edward Fullbrook

In 1965 in Berkeley, California the New Left came into existence by finding a solution to what its founders called “the Monday night club problem”, a problem remarkably similar to the one that decade after decade emasculates “heterodox economics”.  In Berkeley there were numerous left-wing political groups, each based on a different set of underlying ideas, texts, and key terms, and that by long tradition met on Monday evenings.  Each of these groups had its own informal hierarchy of members and its own way of describing and addressing political issues.  Each group also provided valuable social support and intellectual enhancement for its members.  But when it came to changing things, of having any real-word effect, they were no less powerless than bridge clubs.

It was not, however, that most Monday night club members did not want to bring about real-world changes; it was that they had no means of doing so.  But in the fall of 1964 the university administration decided to ban the card-tables that by long tradition the Monday night clubs maned every lunch-hour near the main entrance to the campus.  Suddenly the members of all the Monday night clubs came together, not as members of their particular club, but as individuals who had a common cause.  The result was the Free Speech Movement, which along with the Human Be-In a few months later in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is often given as the birthdate, in the US at least, of The Sixties.

It was the phenomenal success of the Free Speech Movement, followed by reflection on how it came about, that gave the idea for the New Left.  What if on Monday nights the emphasis remained on the special points of view and interests of each club, but for the rest of the week these same people would now look for a common ground on which they could all stand together and speak not to themselves but to the world and with a terminology that reached beyond each club’s core texts.

Predictably, some leaders of Berkeley’s Monday night clubs, perceiving the new movement as a threat to their personal status, sought to undermine it.  But they were unsuccessful.  And, surprisingly, this realignment of energies toward the larger group and, more importantly, towards real-world efficacy came about quickly and painlessly.  Sometimes even amusingly.  The Tuesday night steering committee meetings of what was soon the country’s largest New Left organization often broke down in laughter when someone would forget it was not Monday night and would then immediately be playfully but seriously reprimanded.

Our Monday night problem is called “heterodox economics”, which signifies tens of little groups, most with their own journal and all with their virtues and own revered texts, terminology, heroes and hierarchy of control, but none of which pose a threat to the dominance of the economics that at increasing speed is leading humanity to the ultimate edge.  As I recently outlined here, I see a huge historical opening that has only come into existence in the last year or two, a way of developing a voice and a means of huge amplification by which we can all come together to address the world, to overcome the censorship that threatens everyone’s existence. But this requires that we overcome our “Monday night club problem”.

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