Finance Minister
Pravin Gordhan urged academics to help revise outworn economic thinking that no longer fits a changing, crisis-ridden world on Monday.
Gordhan told the 16th World Economic History Congress in Stellenbosch there was an imbalance between the locus of production and that of growth, and between political beliefs and the predominant reality.
"The question is, is there an epochal transition, are we seeing a new configuration of political and social power?"
Gordhan said history was essential to understanding society, but the challenge was to turn these insights into practice.
"What we learnt from (Karl) Marx is that philosophers interpret the world. However the point is to change it."
When Gordhan became finance minister in 2009, much was made of his early affiliation to the SA Communist Party, but he said he was a no longer a member and had explored Marxism as a set of humanist values.
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