JOAN ROBINSON E OS “CRANKS”: Um Signo da Crise na Teoria Econômica -Ihering Guedes Alcoforado
Nahie Aslanbeigui & Guy Oakes foram muito feliz na nomeação da sua biografia intelectual de Joan Robinson de The Provactive Joan Robinson, destacando um aspecto marcante da sua reflexão que, em certos casos epifânica e perene.
Um exemplo emblemático de uma provocação epifânica perene e, portanto de grande atualidade estar registrada no seu artigo de 1972, The Second Crisis in Economic Theory” quando trata dos CRANKS, chmando atenção não só para sua ameaça, mas principalmente para o que sua emergência sinaliza para os seus companheiros ortodoxos.
Enfim, na sua avaliação dos CRANCKS, que transcrevo abaixo, temos um insight que devidamente explorado pode alterar de forma radical o enquadramento do debate, em devir. estabelecido em torno da Teoria Monetária Moderna.
Ihering Guedes
“A sure sign of a crisis is the prevalence of cranks. It is characteristic of a crisis in theory that cranks get a hearing from the public which orthodoxy is failing to satisfy.[…] The cranks are to be preferred to the orthodox because they see that there is a problem.[…] The cranks and critics flourish because the orthodox economists have neglected the great problems that everyone else feels to be urgent and menacing.[ROBINSON, 1972:8]
“In the thirties we had Major Douglas, and social credit-it can all be done with a fountain pen — and Warren and Pearson who convinced President Roosevelt that raising the dollar price of gold would raise the price of everything else and bring the slump to an end.[…] Nowadays we have plenty of cranks taking up the problems that the economists overlook. Charles Reich proposes to turn America green with a spade and hoe. J. W. Forrester proves on a computer that humanity is bound to be wiped out either by poison or by famine within a hundred years. Our distinguished Chairman [John Kenneth Galbraith] can hardly be classed with the cranks, considering the seat he occupies this year, but next year, perhaps, he will be relegated once more to the position outside the pale of those who commit lese majesM against consumer’s sovereignty.” [ROBINSON, 1972:8]
ROBINSON, Joan, (1972)“The Second Crisis in Economic Theory,” American Economic Review, May 1972 [Robinson, J. (1972) The second crisis in economic theory, in: Collected Economic Papers, Vol. 4 (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1973]