Re: [OPE] Advice to a postgrad

alejandro_agafonow@yahoo.es

1) Jerry, good libraries and theory in general have to be more important things for scientific Marxist. Praxis is important if you, in addition, militate. But without good libraries and theory you only would be able to produce works like: Clacule économique.

I share the complaining of the lack of methodological pluralism in advanced capitalist world, but at universities like the recently founded and personally supported by Hugo Chávez: Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela http://www.ubv.edu.ve/ things are even worse. There is not political pluralism and patronage and cronyism make that though sharing political values, some people are victims of “witch hunting”.

A close friend of mine, which is pretty much to the left of my Market Socialist position, was a victim of these usual purges.

2) You are right concerning affording tuitions before having access to libraries in SOME capitalist countries.

3) The only complain I have about these world rankings, is their English language bias. For example, the citation journals used to build the rankings are shockingly English.

Nevertheless, we have to recognize that the more developed scientific editorial world is the English one. But some none Anglo-Saxon countries have successfully entered this market, like Netherlands.

I have been scanning the scientific editorial world in Spanish to propose in the near future my PhD dissertation and it is astonishing closed. There are few open channels to make propositions (The literature editorial world in Spanish seems to be more developed).Sincerely, I think that Cuba is even worse than Venezuela on these matters. The reason is evident. It has an enduring dictatorial tradition.

Kind regards,
A. Agafonow

----- Mensaje original ----
De: GERALD LEVY <gerald_a_levy@msn.com>
Para: Outline on Political Economy mailing list <ope@lists.csuchico.edu>
Enviado: viernes, 27 de junio, 2008 19:20:19
Asunto: RE: [OPE] Advice to a postgrad

>Action is good but concerning Science, good libraries and a pluralist environment are even better. 

Alejandro A:

For a Marxian, praxis should be more important than a good library.

There are only a handfull of colleges globally where the economics 
departments could be legitimately described as being as being 
"pluralist".  As far as I know, there is not a single economics 
department in the advanced capitalist world in which the economics of
socialism is an area of  specialization. 

> Unfortunately, you can not find either of them in Venezuela today. 

Oh, I think there is much more pluralism in Venezuela than
you recognize! I'm not sure about the situation with libraries,
though. But, at least the _people_ can use university libraries
in Venezuela as opposed to the situation at most of the elite
colleges in the 'North' where you first have to afford the 
tuition before you are allowed access to university resources.

> We don’t even have a single university among the best 500 in the world.

I just looked at that listing. It is shockingly US- and Euro-Centric.

> In addition, as non English speaking political economist I recommend to take advantage of the dynamism 
> of the English speaking scholarly institutions. 

There is more dynamism in a day in Venezuela than in a year 
at an elite college in the West.  There is a tremendous amount of 
dynamism in Cuba today as well. 

Dynamism is what students have when they enter graduate school
in the West. In the course of their studies and experience, it is 
generally shaken out of them.

In solidarity, Jerry

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