The Significance of ‘the Standard Model’ and its ‘Upsetting’: From the Archives: Phil McShane’s 2011-2017 Seminar and the Future of the Lonergan Project
Hugh Williams
The Significance of ‘the Standard Model’ and its ‘Upsetting’:
From the Archives: Phil McShane’s 2011-2017 Seminar and the Future of the Lonergan Project
As for how Phil McShane understood Lonergan’s understanding and intended use of ‘the standard model’ we can return to the modest manifesto-analysis that Phil wrote on the on-line seminars of 2011-2017. This should not be forgotten.
There Phil wrote about “Economics’ New Standard Model” in the context of his on-line seminar and its relationship to a massive cultural change in this millennium (which actually we are told he began to speak of in terms of the next few decades, and more than a decade has passed since the seminar began in 2011).
The seminar was desirous of transdisciplinary work that aides in developing a new standard functional model. But there was the interim and more modest objective to begin with – of the critical engagement with higher education, especially with economics courses in one‘s local area and with their global adherence to a standard model that basically is irrelevant to any treatment of local economy. There was to be the “lookout” for the exception, the serious treatment of the local economy which was to be appreciated as contributing towards the new standard model in economics.
We were directed to Lonergan by Phil, to “For A New Political Economy” pp. 113-134 to get some technical and existential sense of the core of this new standard model. Here we find sections on Lonergan’s economic analysis for which Phil says Lonergan basically exclaimed “Eureka!!! I have it and I’ve expressed it.” The seminar was to be about this discovery too in some way, and especially in its relevance for your (our) local situations. And it was to be the new basis for finance and for foreign trade. But this was a vast vast task. (And I say, only ever similarly or analogously imagined here in the West in the traditions of Marxism and the Christian Gospels.)
Yes, Phil confesses the seeming arrogance of it all. He refers to Lonergan’s “arrogant halt” with the claim that the main analytic apparatus is complete. And here Phil also confesses that he himself is not much beyond some vague sense of the ‘what’ of it all, having some further glimmerings of what is at stake and of the opposition to be encountered as manifest in higher education programs (as in BAs in economics).
To illustrate this on the Left, we were pointed to Thomas Piketty’s recent noble but flawed efforts in his "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" (2014) which Phil tried to reorient correctly for the sake of a beginning in a proper heuristic for understanding local and global economics. Here Phil appealed to his Ch.7 in his “Piketty’s Plight”(2014) (I’ve supplied an attachment of the monograph in my previous email).
Returning to his invitation to many of us to participate in a seminar regarding what economics should really be doing … the seminar sought to generate in those who have some deep sense of this standard model’s, i.e., present economics’, failure, and some grip on Lonergan’s contribution to the alternative. All this energy and commitment emerged out of reaction to Phil’s monograph “Piketty’s Plight and the Global Future”(2014) whereby some sensed and were invigorated by this pointing in a new direction, while many more remained submerged in the old-style academic comparisons resulting at best in reformist tinkering in and on a one circuit understanding and practice of economy.
However, the revolutionary comparisons called for by today’s contradictions would and should be between this new direction-orientation and what remains of the settled standard model of liberal capitalism.[1]
So, this bi-weekly seminar work was to gather the questions and searchings of the group so as to discern this pointing forward with the aid of the group. What aid was this, Phil asks? It was to be a loose pattern of discovery and illumination mixed with questions and puzzles that were to be shared. There was to be a focus on comprehension that bends towards effective communication with economists and journalists and in social media. All this seminar work was to be done by email.
The participation did not always have to be vigorous but the hope was for there to be enough communal energy in this project to ground the larger hope that the group get and have a sufficient grip on this existential gap between the teachings sustaining this standard model and the beginnings of this new science of economics so as to begin the “upset”, the “change”, the “overthrow”, the “overcoming” of the opposition, especially in higher education in economics.
To be effective in this, the “work” (movement) needs to continue and to grow in solidarity until actually effective (see MiT p.353). The movement would need to mature if it was to effectively to meet this situation of cultural decadence. This all was to be tending towards an understanding that seeks to persuade others, person to person … and especially for Phil towards economists and journalists.
Commentary:
With this exposition of the McShane manifesto-analysis surrounding the 2011-2017 seminar project, I believe most people can sense the revolutionary nature of the project. And I suppose each of us has to decide whether this remains relevant or was just a passing thing in the Lonergan tradition of thought.
One also can perhaps understand why I detected Phil’s distinct interest in certain developments among younger Marxists (see attached for a substantial Marxist work Phil felt worthy of recycling in certain quarters) and perhaps in the Marxist tradition more generally. Personally, I’ve found that this is where ‘this project’, in its 'maturing' in both theory and practice, is most likely to continue on with a seriousness required by the signs of the times.
This is why I’ve found myself revisiting and to some degree returning to my own Christian-Marxist roots and have found that, as difficult as it may be, a Christian (Lonergan)-Marxist dialogue is essential perhaps for both traditions’ meaningful development or, more aptly, for both traditions resistance to 'cultural decadence' and a fatal ineptitude.
In short, the dominant standard model, for me, has to be liberal capitalism and it needs to be critically engaged by Lonergan’s economics, yes, but as a viable alternative it, in my view, will need to be, in its maturing, also fused with the best elements of the Marxist tradition yet to be determined, for that be the work of any future seminar if there should ever be one again. And if not, we are perhaps in reality left with functional collaboration's fusion with the profound older Marxist notion of praxis. This praxis as I understand it, in most general terms, is the free activity through which 'we' together create and change our historical world and ourselves. I also see it as key for moving to any higher viewpoint that might constitute or approximate the synthesis Lonergan desired for the liberal-marxist dialectic. I see Raymaker’s and Whalon’s recent AIRR (2023) text, at least for me, reintroducing and enlivening these issues and it does so from a broad-minded Christian perspective with all its strengths and limitations.
Hugh
[1] Phil then says something peculiar and elusive – that “this identification and clarification solve Lonergan’s problem of a treatise on the mystical body.” (See Insight pp.763-764)
Hugh Williams
Pierre and John et al,
This relatively lengthy post below needs the accompaniment of a little constructive addendum-proposal.
(I believe I proposed something like this for the main AIRR text, and was only able to partially fulfill the proposal. Nevertheless, there was some interest at the time.)
When I read the appendixes to the AIRR text, it feels to me that we almost have
what might be called another much more concentrated text that almost stands alone as a set of very focused
instructive notes that provide a condensed representation of the main text's basic thesis along with some key technical
expositions of Lonergan's economic analytical schema.
Would there be any interest among at least some of us, especially the authors, over the remainder of this winter in reading each of these eight appendixes, say over a time limited eight week period
(a seminar of sorts), so as to help some of us get a better grip on the text's reading of Lonergan's economics and ultimately on
Lonergan's economics itself and try to do so always with this McShane inspired bent towards 'implementation' in mind.
Each of these appendixes would allow for at least some of us to gather questions and searchings ... so as to discern this now urgent 'pointing forward
with the aid of one another' and especially the authors. It would be 'a loose pattern of discovery and illumination mixed with questions and puzzles that are to be shared.
There would be a focus on comprehension that bends towards effective communication on these matters with anyone, as circumstances allow ...
with other persons in our respective circles who are also pondering and most of all wanting somehow 'to effectively meet this situation of cultural decadence.'
I speak naively of eight winter weeks, but for some of us appendixes D, E, F might involve more 'turtle paced' ponderings of more than a week each.
What say ye ..... ?
Hugh
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