A “Scientific” Observation Regarding Socialism

Abstract

In a field stirred by controversy one who attempts to take a “scientific” attitude characteristically finds himself between two fires: the dispassionate seeker after truth is despised and abused by both sides. For in a controversy both sides cannot be right and in general both sides are wrong. So it has been with economists. The matter with which they deal is the subject of political controversy; the conservative views with alarm many scientific commonplaces of economics as dangerous radicalism, while the labor leader and social reform propagandist be-rates them as the corrupt expression of a scion and dependent of the privileged classes; and both sides scorn them as theoretical and academic.

Citation

Emmett, R.B. (2011), "A “Scientific” Observation Regarding Socialism", Emmett, R.B. (Ed.) Frank H. Knight in Iowa City, 1919–1928 (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 29 Part 2), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 55-56. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-4154(2011)000029B009