Robin Hahnel is a radical economist and political activist. He is Professor Emeritus at American University in Washington, D.C. where he taught in the Department of Economics from 1976 – 2008. He has also taught at the University of Maryland at College Park, the Catholic University in Lima, Peru, and most recently at Lewis and Clark College and Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. His work in economic theory is informed by the work of Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, John Maynard Keynes, Karl Polanyi, Pierro Straffa, and Joan Robinson among others. He is best known as co-creator, along with Michael Albert, of a radical alternative to capitalism known as participatory economics, (or parecon for short).
Politically he considers himself a proud product of the New Left and is sympathetic to libertarian socialism. He has been active in many social movements and organizations over forty years, beginning with the Harvard and MIT SDS chapters and the Boston area anti-Vietnam war movement in the 1960s, more recently with the Southern Maryland Greens and the Movement for Global Justice in Washington, D.C., and currently with Jobs With Justice and the Coalition for a Livable Future where he now lives in Portland, Oregon.
Currently he is helping organize the Northwest Gathering on the Economic and Environmental Crises to be held in Portland, Oregon on October 2 - 4, 2009.
Please visit the conference site to learn more: www.econvergence.org
Join the conversation. Read Robin's Editorial blog on the current crisis and other topics by clicking here.
Robin can be contacted by clicking here.