Neoclassical economics is the idiom of most economic discourse today. It is the paradigm that bends the twigs of young minds. Then it confines the florescence of older ones, like chicken-wire shaping a topiary. It took form about a hundred years ago, when Henry George and his reform proposals were a clear and present political danger and challenge to the landed and intellectual establishments of the world. Few people realize to what degree the founders of Neo-classical economics changed the discipline for the express purpose of deflecting George and frustrating future students seeking to follow his arguments. The strategem was semantic: to destroy the very words in which he expressed himself. Simon Patten expounded it succinctly. “Nothing pleases a …single taxer better than … to use the well-known economic theories … [therefore] economic doctrine must be recast” (Patten, 1908: 219; Collier, 1979: 270).
in Fred Harrison, The Corruption of Economics. London: Shepheard-Walwyn Publishing Co. pp. 29-164, i
