Professor of Economics Erol Balkan presented a paper titled “Occupy Wall Street!” on July 7 in an international symposium at Yildiz Technical University, Besiktas in Istanbul, Turkey. The symposium, “Veblen, Capitalism and Possibilities for a Rational Economic Order,” focused on central features of Veblen’s thought. Balkan’s paper was presented during a session on “Crisis of Capitalism, Social Reactions and Veblen.”
According to the symposium website, its aim was “to provide a venue for researchers, academicians, graduate students, activists as well as ‘engineers’ to present and share their works and views regarding Veblen’s critical analysis of finance capitalism, financial crises and the wasteful nature of capitalism; his positing of the engineers’ role in reference to his ideas about the content of a rational economic order; and his doubts about the transformative effects of politics, revolutionary or otherwise.”
