Ha-Joon Chang

During the break when I was writing the report for my presentation, I came across some critiques against Ha-Joon Chang arguing that he is not really an economist. Although I only have limited knowledge about the market system, I have to say that Ha-Joon Chang is not only an economist, by the definition of those critiques, but also a revolutionary thinker. Indeed he is not an economist, an orthodox economist, which seems to be the mainstream in our current society. Yet economics is not that simple. Not everyone is a consumer and not every consumer consume rationally. When critics comment that Chang is ignorant, I have the feeling that they themselves are ignorant. They ignore the fact that some underdeveloped and developing countries did not perform well under free-market capitalism. They claim that these are only occasional incidents. But if self-interest motivation and all those orthodox economic theories can explain everything, then why do we need philosophers to search for human nature, historians to help us learn from past failures and successes, and politicians to guide a nation? Just as Socrates claims, “True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.” Clearly aware of this, Ha-Joon Chang suggested we look at history, institutions and social structure to analyze the economics instead of taking the orthodox economic theories for granted.

I will end the blog post with a quote from Zoe Williams: “You could use it as a primer, a reference book, a brief history; it is all these things, but isn't contained by them. It reflects the urgent generosity of a thinker whose depth of understanding is matched by a desire to see us all understand. Ha-Joon Chang is himself the walking disproof of the neoclassical individual, the perfectly rational, perfectly selfish consumer; his wealth is in his knowledge, perceptiveness, insight and vision. And he can't give it away fast enough. It flies off him like the seeds of a dandelion.”