Radical Economics in America, 11th Jan., 2011.

Martin Bronfenbrenner has an article about the rise of radical economics in America in the 1960 and 70s, right when China was beginning to doubt its own socialist system.

Only five years later, in late 1969, the end of ideology had itself ended. A thou- sand-member Union for Radical Political Economics (U.R.P.E.) had not only been organized by graduate students and junior practitioners, but had staged a "counter- convention" at an annual meeting of the American Economic Association and disrupted a few sessions of its prestigious parent body [29, 1970]. Several academic institutions, including Harvard, had curricula in radical economics. At a few of them the radicals controlled the entire economics program.' Advertisements for the revision of America's most popular undergraduate economics textbook-a mouthpiece of establishment economics through seven editions-now assured us that "Complacent Establishment Economics is the Enemy!" The change is extraordinary. The sleeping dogs have not only awakened, they have awakened with extra teeth and extra sets of vocal cords. [...]

Radical economists see the existing economic order as hopelessly infected with a number of evils, "to such an extent that no part of it can be extracted which is not contaminated" [5, 1969, p. 53]. Further, they are pessimistic about the possibility of significantly remedying these evils by democratic, representative, or parliamentary measures because both the mass media and legislative campaign funds are controlled by an "establishment" of satisfied persons and groups with great interrelated wealth and power.