This book, by Swedish columnist Katrine Marçal, actually took me quite by surprise - first in a bad way, but turning into a good way the further along I read. I was introduced to the book by a seminar on feminist economics that my friend Olivia ran for our campaigning group (I've definitely mentioned this before in other posts I think), which was extremely interesting and important, well attended, and had a brilliant title - the latter she admitted to having borrowed from this book.
We are brought by this book to question everything that conventional economic wisdom tell us, and fails to tell us. Maybe there are a few theoretical kinks that could be ironed out, maybe there are a few presumptions that need reassessing in the face of actual data, maybe there are a few differences between schools of thought that could, in critical conversation, learn from each others' overlaps. But the main problem of economics is this: its central unshakeable dependence on Economic Man (let's call him Johnson), a hyper-rational utility-maximising agent who knows exactly what to want and do and how. All neoclassical theory is derived from the application of Johnson's character to aggregated decision-making throughout micro and macro systems. The problem? Oh, there are several. Johnson is not trustworthy (because why would he be? there is no room for normative fields like trust, moral obligation, social loyalty, and such, if one's core drive is utility maximisation), and he also, ostensibly, is not female. This second point may sound trivial but listen: our presumptions of economic possibility depend on individual agents being able to conduct their optimal lives with complete autonomy, but in real human history and society, the brute fact is that we don't - people do unpaid work for huge amounts of unseen unrecorded time just to help keep our daily functions ticking over. Hordes of invisible women support the 'autonomous' agency of their Johnsons by keeping their houses and families in order. Even the 'first economist' Adam Smith, who despite being a world-eminent moral philosopher for his theories of sentimental empathy and the importance of helping and caring, was waited on by his mother for his whole life before her death (if you were only reading this out of intrigue at the title, sorry for the spoiler).
The book lays out pictures of Johnson (note: it does not call him this), and the implications for society and economics on presuming his presence in all persons, and then begins attacking both the unrealistic picture of humanity that Johnson is, both in terms of psychological behaviour and binding to social norms, roles, expectations, and relationships. I came to the book expecting a rigorous blow-by-blow exposé of where economics lacked feminism and how it could be patched up, hence my puzzled disappointment with the first few chapters - but then I realised what Marçal was doing, and it's a work far broader, deeper, more punchy and great. She has got right to the heart of what's wrong with neoclassical economics and in turn its apologism for neoliberal politics; they lack recognition of real human nature, which is not pure utility-maximisation but has many aspects including the need for love, care, and people; and they lack recognition of real human society, which is not composed of autonomous agents (with necessarily invisible women) but is complex and interdependent, with people relying on each other in relationships and bonds that arise from far more than an agreed you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours. I believe in this book, Marçal has shown us the ugliness of presumed selfishness, and how poorly this results in economic theory and policy. She has not written a book about feminist economics, rather it is a feminist means of crawling to the heart of economics so as to plant a bomb that destroys all our conventional understanding of the dismal science; feminism is a crucial part of the wider normative struggle for socioeconomic justice, and she does a superlative job in showing us why these aspects of human reality (especially including, given ongoing inequality, gender) matter to it.
Her writing style I found it hard to adjust to liking. Though it is very lively and talkative, being aimed at quite a general readership, it seems very clunky and weirdly mismatched in tone - though I think, given how similar this complaint is to another that I had a while ago, maybe it's just hard to translate informal Swedish into comparably-nice English. Like I said, it is written accessibly, with her central narrative of deconstructing Johnson rendering all economic concepts easily intelligible (although don't make the same mistake I did; you should know that this is what she's doing, as a result she writes in ongoing metaphors quite extensively so some academic readers may have to step back a bit from how typical-non-fiction-ish this is).
If you're looking for a book on feminist economics, this isn't it. But if you're interested in social justice generally, whether from a gender angle or an economic angle, or wherever, this book will help you develop a much closer understanding of the relationship between those issues, and how it all hinges on Johnson; that imaginary friend of economists and policymakers who has, without ever existing, bent their ideas to suit his ends - which, unsurprisingly, turn out to be those of the rich, the well-educated, the heterosexual, the healthy, the white, the unscrupulous, the male. We need to make the world run better for those who are not Johnson, which is in fact basically all of us, and a big part of starting to do this is changing economics by demonstrating that he, unlike Adam Smith's mum, is a fiction.
We are brought by this book to question everything that conventional economic wisdom tell us, and fails to tell us. Maybe there are a few theoretical kinks that could be ironed out, maybe there are a few presumptions that need reassessing in the face of actual data, maybe there are a few differences between schools of thought that could, in critical conversation, learn from each others' overlaps. But the main problem of economics is this: its central unshakeable dependence on Economic Man (let's call him Johnson), a hyper-rational utility-maximising agent who knows exactly what to want and do and how. All neoclassical theory is derived from the application of Johnson's character to aggregated decision-making throughout micro and macro systems. The problem? Oh, there are several. Johnson is not trustworthy (because why would he be? there is no room for normative fields like trust, moral obligation, social loyalty, and such, if one's core drive is utility maximisation), and he also, ostensibly, is not female. This second point may sound trivial but listen: our presumptions of economic possibility depend on individual agents being able to conduct their optimal lives with complete autonomy, but in real human history and society, the brute fact is that we don't - people do unpaid work for huge amounts of unseen unrecorded time just to help keep our daily functions ticking over. Hordes of invisible women support the 'autonomous' agency of their Johnsons by keeping their houses and families in order. Even the 'first economist' Adam Smith, who despite being a world-eminent moral philosopher for his theories of sentimental empathy and the importance of helping and caring, was waited on by his mother for his whole life before her death (if you were only reading this out of intrigue at the title, sorry for the spoiler).
The book lays out pictures of Johnson (note: it does not call him this), and the implications for society and economics on presuming his presence in all persons, and then begins attacking both the unrealistic picture of humanity that Johnson is, both in terms of psychological behaviour and binding to social norms, roles, expectations, and relationships. I came to the book expecting a rigorous blow-by-blow exposé of where economics lacked feminism and how it could be patched up, hence my puzzled disappointment with the first few chapters - but then I realised what Marçal was doing, and it's a work far broader, deeper, more punchy and great. She has got right to the heart of what's wrong with neoclassical economics and in turn its apologism for neoliberal politics; they lack recognition of real human nature, which is not pure utility-maximisation but has many aspects including the need for love, care, and people; and they lack recognition of real human society, which is not composed of autonomous agents (with necessarily invisible women) but is complex and interdependent, with people relying on each other in relationships and bonds that arise from far more than an agreed you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours. I believe in this book, Marçal has shown us the ugliness of presumed selfishness, and how poorly this results in economic theory and policy. She has not written a book about feminist economics, rather it is a feminist means of crawling to the heart of economics so as to plant a bomb that destroys all our conventional understanding of the dismal science; feminism is a crucial part of the wider normative struggle for socioeconomic justice, and she does a superlative job in showing us why these aspects of human reality (especially including, given ongoing inequality, gender) matter to it.
Her writing style I found it hard to adjust to liking. Though it is very lively and talkative, being aimed at quite a general readership, it seems very clunky and weirdly mismatched in tone - though I think, given how similar this complaint is to another that I had a while ago, maybe it's just hard to translate informal Swedish into comparably-nice English. Like I said, it is written accessibly, with her central narrative of deconstructing Johnson rendering all economic concepts easily intelligible (although don't make the same mistake I did; you should know that this is what she's doing, as a result she writes in ongoing metaphors quite extensively so some academic readers may have to step back a bit from how typical-non-fiction-ish this is).
If you're looking for a book on feminist economics, this isn't it. But if you're interested in social justice generally, whether from a gender angle or an economic angle, or wherever, this book will help you develop a much closer understanding of the relationship between those issues, and how it all hinges on Johnson; that imaginary friend of economists and policymakers who has, without ever existing, bent their ideas to suit his ends - which, unsurprisingly, turn out to be those of the rich, the well-educated, the heterosexual, the healthy, the white, the unscrupulous, the male. We need to make the world run better for those who are not Johnson, which is in fact basically all of us, and a big part of starting to do this is changing economics by demonstrating that he, unlike Adam Smith's mum, is a fiction.
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