Pluralist Economics

Citation

Wilber, C.K. (2010), "Pluralist Economics", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 37 No. 11, pp. 894-895. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijse.2010.37.11.894.1

Edward Fullbrook has done the economics profession a great service in bringing together these articles written by economists from eight countries and from equally diverse backgrounds. The articles have one thing in common – the belief that there is not only ONE way to do economics, that the neo‐classical claim to be the one true scientific economics is wrong. Thus, the title of the book is faithful to the contents – the book is all about a pluralist conception of economics.

The authors believe that social science and empirical investigation can make important contributions to our understanding and resolution of policy issues, but only if we are clear on the nature of social science and the role of theory and quantification. In particular, we must recognize the limits of our truth claims, their communal nature, and the possibility of their being utilized to serve vested interests. We must then be very clear about our potential contribution and must educate our students and the public about what we can offer. Finally, they argue that we must find ways of making our basic data and analyses more understandable so the public is better able to join the policy debates.

While economics as a science is driven by a search for truth, it is not interested in just any truth. The relevant truth must be both “interesting” and “valuable”, and thus all science is goal‐directed activity. Further, the criteria for a “good” or “acceptable” scientific theory cannot be ranked in terms of their intrinsic importance, but only in relation to the degree they serve particular goals of the particular scientific community. Thus, the neo‐classical claim that that there is only one legitimate way to do economics (their way) does not hold up under close examination.

Theory choice is not based objectively on non‐controversial criteria (e.g. degree of verification or corroboration), but on criteria that are inevitably value‐laden (i.e. the extent to which each theory serves specific ends). The scientists' search for “valuable truth” is directed by what they think society (and science) ought to do. No amount of evidence ever completely confirms or disconfirms any empirical hypothesis but only renders it more or less probable.

These authors reject the tenet that we have objective access to the empirical world through our sense experience. Rather they argue that the empirical world can be known only through the filter of a theory; thus, facts are theory‐laden. Thus, a major argument of those who reject the neo‐classical approach as privileged runs as follows: a world view greatly influences the scientific paradigm out of which one works; value judgments are closely associated with the world view; theories must remain coherent with the world view; facts themselves are theory‐laden; therefore, the whole scientific venture is permeated by value judgments from the start. This world view, or Weltanschauung, shapes the interests of the scientist and determines the questions asked, the problems considered important, the answers deemed acceptable, the axioms of the theory, the choice of “relevant facts”, the hypotheses proposed to account for such facts, the criteria used to assess the fruitfulness of competing theories, the language in which results are to be formulated, and so on.

McCloskey (1983) has argued that economics is best understood as a form of argumentation or persuasion rather than the value‐free scientific endeavor that logical positivists would have us believe. The effort does allow economists and other social scientists to “make knowledge”, but it is a contingent knowledge which depends greatly on factors such as operation of the scientific community of economists, the times, the biases or ideologies of researchers, the historical development and context of the issues, and the technical capacities of the scientists. Rorty (1987) describes this as “pragmatism” and suggests that the aspiration of scientists should be to find mechanisms to bring about “unforced agreement” among themselves, rather than to reach Truth.

A clear lesson to be drawn from the authors in this book is: economists need to recognize that there is no alternative to working from a world view. Making explicit that world view will help keep economics more honest and useful. For example, many institutional economists see the social world as characterized by interdependence of economic actors with the result that “externalities” are ubiquitous. The assignment of rights by the political and legal systems, therefore, determines “who gets what”. The distribution of income, wealth, and rights that results from economic transactions and public policies becomes as important as efficiency. Therefore, economists with this world view believe every policy should be evaluated for its impact on distribution as well as on efficiency[1]. Allowing many economic worldviews to flourish will ultimately make for better economic policy. I recommend you buy this book and take its arguments to heart. Our future may depend on it.

Notes

See Allan Schmid (1978, 1989). Also see the exchange of correspondence between Samuels and Buchanan (1975).