Students learning the mechanisms of our globalized economy hear a range of views from International Political Economy professor Glenn Fieldman, but they can’t escape her socialist influence. But as the semester deepens, their fears of the class subside.

IPE, an interdisciplinary study of world politics and economics, has been offered to International Relations students at SF State since the late 1980s. Two years after its inception, Fieldman has enjoyed teaching it and hopes her students will better understand how the current system hasn’t been working.

“It became clear to me that you can’t explain political phenomena without looking at economics,” “Fieldman said. “It’s as simple as that.”

In just one hour during her evening class last Thursday, both Fieldman and her students discussed how foreign exchange rates and floating exchange rates work. They discussed ‘hot money’ and how its free, fast flows across boarders can either hurt or help any given country’s economy. And they discussed the U.S. balance of payments – how to read and understand it and predict whether or not the country is in good economic shape, both domestically and in trade.

International Relations major Lucy Manoukian, a 28 year old senior, was afraid to take the required course because she’s not math-oriented. Soon after the start of the semester, she found just having a basic understanding of politics and trade sufficed. “I like Glenn because she makes things simple to understand, even though the issues are very complicated.” Manoukian said.

“The only thing I don’t like is that it’s four hours every Thursday night; it’s very tiring,” Manoukian added. “I don’t go to sleep (in class), because she’s interesting and she makes us get involved; she makes us give her our points of view.”

IPE became widely taught in the U.S. after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. Before the end of the Cold War most international relations courses focused just on security studies, Fieldman explained. Since then, universities, aware of the alarming rate in which the U.S. had been losing its economic competitiveness, saw more need to include international economic relations into curriculums, Fieldman said.

The timing was right for her. After growing up in Denver, where she earned her master's in Political Science, and a PhD in International Studies, she saw the Bay Area as the place to move to and teach.

The course looks mainly at three theoretical approaches – from Adam Smith’s classical liberalists’ lassez-faire, to IPE realists, who cite the need for strengthened state-controls and security, to the neo-Marxists who apply the philosophies of nineteenth century political economist Karl Marx, championing the working classes, to the analogous exploitation of Third World economies.

Fieldman pitches her tent in the neo-Marxists’ camp. She explained that since the U.S. is the leading capitalist democracy, the rest of the world is vulnerable and directly affected by our own politics and economic policies.

“The way I look at political economy is very definitely shaped by Karl Marx – [through] the lens of ‘class,’ for example,” said Fieldman. “If you look at the division of wealth in this country – the gap between the wealthy and the poor and the concentration of wealth, how do you explain what’s going on in this country without looking at that?”

Bias in any classroom in inescapable, she explained. Teachers select facts to support their views, choose textbooks; students get persuaded. She added that it is “very uncommon in macroeconomics classes to discuss and present views of challengers to mainstream perspectives, or even talk about the history of economic thought.”

“[Fieldman’s] more liberal, I’m more conservative – leaning toward less government intervention,” said Lobsang Kongdan, a 31-year-old IPE student majoring in Political Science, “[But] she seems really knowledgeable and she asks a lot of questions,” Kongdan said. “There’s a free exchange of ideas, although I disagree with a lot of them.”

Varying student opinions do not disturb her. What disturbs her is being labeled bias because some of her views are different than in news media. Using that as an example, she points to how media patrons find out how the stock market did on any given day, but not how it affects the everyday workers in the United States. “That’s a bias,” she said. “That is a choice of what to cover based on somebody’s notion of what’s important. It doesn’t happen to be my notion of what’s important.”

Another problem Fieldman finds in media is the coverage of the rich and famous, particularly with the wealthy movie actors and athletes. “We have a myth that anyone can make it in the United States, and certainly one’s individual effort counts to a degree,” Fieldman said. “But I suspect many of the people who work the hardest are the poorest.”

She doesn’t think wealthy actors and athletes intend to be used as distractions to the bigger problems in our society, “but they’re being used that way,” she said. “The real wealth in society stems from ownership, not work; you don’t get rich by working.”

“What I got from Marx, mostly, was a way of looking at things,” Fieldman said.
“The emphasis on ‘class’ is very important to me as an analytical tool. It’s crucial.”

She emphasizes that she is not sympathetic to the former Soviet Union, nor would she ever advocate a state-planned economy. “I’m a Social Democrat. I’m very much in the Marxian tradition [where] there are a number of thinkers; it’s a big tradition” she said, adding that one of her main inspirations was Rosa Luxemburg, a Marxian thinker who valued democracy, and lost her life for that, going toe-to-toe with Lenin. “Democracy is very important to me,” Fieldman said.

“If people can’t bring compassion into the way they look at the rest of the world, they might at least consider the question of self interest,” said Fieldman. “A world that is as divided as this one is not going to be a secure world.”