The End of the Old Economic Order Is an Opening for the Left
For decades, the rules of the global economy — and the economics discipline — seemed fixed. But now, with Donald Trump’s help, the edifice is collapsing. We talked to heterodox economist Ha-Joon Chang to understand dying dogmas and emerging alternatives.
The world economy is being remade, and it’s not all bad, from new geopolitical openings for the Global South to industrial policy back on the table. (Evan Vucci-Pool / Getty Images)
Ha-Joon Chang is one of the world’s most influential heterodox economists. A professor at SOAS University of London and the author of Kicking Away the Ladder, Bad Samaritans, and Economics: The User’s Guide, among other works, he has spent decades challenging the development orthodoxy imposed on the Global South and exposing the myths at the heart of mainstream economic thinking.
Jacobin‘s Asher Dupuy-Spencer spoke with Chang about the state of the economics discipline, the narrowing of development pathways in the age of China, the prospects for left governments in the advanced world, and the economic consequences of the war in Iran.
Asher Dupuy-Spencer
I wanted to start with a question about the state of economics. There’s a prevailing view that the 2007–8 economic crisis threw the economics discipline itself into crisis. How true is that? How much has the discipline actually changed, and what does it mean for the class content of mainstream economics more broadly?
Ha-Joon Chang
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