LSE’s pedagogic reach made its simple economic principles influential across Britain

Evidence

The principles that Plant advanced so ruthlessly were very much part of the twentieth century. They reflected the way in which modern economics was evolving into an apparently closed, self-referring system of thought suitable for teaching to young people and capable of ever-increasing technical elaboration—rather like Ramist logic in sixteenth-century France. Plant’s arguments on labor discrimination and copyright employed very simple economic principles to great effect. But what distinguished the exposition of economic principles at the London School of Economics was a strong normative belief that such classroom principles could be translated unmediated into economic argument and policy agendas. What lent this, for the time, idiosyncratic belief resonance was the school’s position in the expanding educational system. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 402

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the wider theme of how intellectual networks translate classroom doctrine into policy agendas — the core of the Mont Pèlerin story. — connects to: Fabian commitment to openness let a reactionary economics take root at the LSE — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 52; LSE’s distance-learning network reached students across Britain and the Empire — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 402; LSE represented mainstream British economics more than Oxbridge by the 1950s — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 402 (+1 more)
• CANDY: The parallel between neoclassical economics and Ramist logic — a closed self-referring system — is a fun comparative observation.

Broader Connections

• LSE’s distance-learning network reached students across Britain and the Empire #expands (0.82) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 402
• LSE represented mainstream British economics more than Oxbridge by the 1950s #corroborates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 402
• Interwar British liberalism re-founded itself on economics rather than politics #expands (0.70) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 395