Radicalism in economics has taken many different forms, but its content has always been a concern for equity and social justice. Whether you are a socialist or a syndicalist, a Beveregian welfarist or a non-compromising revolutionary, a Marxist or a social democrat, if you are a radical economist, you uphold the cause of the poor and the underprivileged. You fight the forces of status quo and establishment, which are associated with the injustices and inequities of the established system.
Championing the under-privileged almost invariably meant fighting the privileged. That fight does not remain confined to politics, but extends to the social and cultural fields, because the privileged few maintain their dominance over the established order not only through the coercive power of the state machinery but also through direct and indirect social and cultural influences. A radical economist thus becomes associated with all radical causes calling for a radical transformation of the society. His radicalism then becomes a value, a question of identity, that separates him from the others who are the apologists of the establishment -- those who are on the other side of the barricade.
For a radical economist however, the fight against the establishment must be based on the economic reasoning for rejecting it in favour of an alternative order. But the economic conditions of the world change, with changes in technology, and the growth of productive forces. The radical economists do not differ in their urge for social transformation or concern for the poor. But they differ in their economic reasoning -- their diagnosis of the problems of the existing order and the methods of changing them.
These differences have often been very sharp and far-reaching. Although all of them held that the economic plight of the under-privileged was the result of the way the economy operated, they differed in their prescription about how to change the
