Post Keynesian Economics (PKE) is at a cross road. The academic climate at universities has become more hostile to survival and the mainstream has become more diverse internally. Moreover, a heterodox camp of diverse groups of non-mainstream economists is forming. The debate on the future of PKE has so far focussed on the relation to the mainstream. This paper argues that this is not an important issue for the future of PKE. The debate has overlooked the dialectics between academic hegemony and economic (and social) stability. The important question is, whether PKE offers useful explanations of the ongoing socio-economic transformation. PKE has generated valuable insights but it offers little on important real world phenomena such as supply-side phenomena like the increasing use of ICT and the globalisation of production, social issues like precarisation and the polarization of income distribution or ecological challenges like climate change. It is these issues that will decide the future of PKE. (author´s abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Ecological economics has arisen over a period of three decades with a strong emphasis on the essential need to recognise the embeddedness of the economy in the biophysical. However, that element of realism is not matched by an equally well informed social theory. Indeed the tendency has been to adopt mainstream economic concepts, theories and models formulated of the basis of a formal mathematical deductivist approach that pays little or no attention to social reality. Similarly mainstream economic methods are employed as pragmatic devices for communication. As a result ecological economics has failed to develop its own consistent and coherent theory and failed to make the link between the social and the economic. In order to reverse this situation the social and political economy must be put to the fore and that is the aim of social ecological economics. This paper provides a brief overview of the arguments for such a development. The prospect is of unifying a range of critical thought on the social and environmental crises with the aim of informing the necessary social ecological transformation of the economy. / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers

為什麼今天我們仍然需要《資本論》？應該如何讀它？台灣是個左翼思想長期受到壓抑的社會，思考這兩個問題的人並不多，但筆者認為要瞭解世界和台灣資本主義的發展，卡爾•馬克思（Karl Marx）始終是個無法迴避的思想者。此篇論文是筆者在回答這兩個問題的基礎上，試著重訪《資本論》對資本主義的洞見、駁斥被當作意識形態工具的主流經濟學理論，前者和後者互為彼此的手段和目的，只有藉由將主流理論的缺陷呈現出來，才能讓人認知到對《資本論》的需要，只有透過《資本論》這套不同的理論框架，才能襯托出主流經濟學整體世界觀上的偏誤。主流經濟學對勞動市場的想像，不但壟斷了學術話語權，更矇蔽了一般人的認知，最糟糕的是，這套理論強烈傾向維持市場自律的保守立場，禁錮了勞動者的思想、馴服了勞工運動的反抗力量。筆者將在此篇論文裡，隨著《資本論》經濟範疇的展開，亦步亦趨地解構主流經濟學理論的哲學基礎、分析方法和結論，將這套理論的錯誤和意識形態幽靈赤裸裸地呈現出來，最後，試著建立一套以馬克思主義為基礎的替代性分析框架，以理解諸如提高工資運動等現實議題的意義，在理論上重新找回勞動階級自我解放的前途。