IS ECONOMICS BIASED?
| Author | R. L. Meek |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1957.tb00213.x |
| Date | 01 February 1957 |
| Published date | 01 February 1957 |
SCOTTISH JOURNAL
OF
POLITICAL
ECONOMY
FEBRUARY
1957
IS ECONOMICS BIASED?
A HERETICAL
VIEW
OF
A LEADING THESIS
IN
SCHUMPETER’S
HISTORY’
I
How
far is economics invalidated by ideological bias? How far, in
other words, must it be regarded as historically relative? This was one
of
the great questions which absorbed Schumpeter during the last
decade
of
his life, when he was engaged in expanding his
Epochen
into the monumental
History
of
Econontic Analysis.
One
of
the most
basic contributions of the
History,
at least as Schumpeter himself saw
it, was its demonstration that the historical development of
‘
economic
analysis
’,
as distinct from that of
‘
political economy
’
and
‘
economic
thought
’,z
displays a relatively high degree of autonomy with respect to
socio-historical facts.
‘
It is
. . .
our main purpose
’,
wrote Schumpeter
near the beginning of the
History,
‘
to describe what may be called the
process of the Filiation of Scientific Ideas-the process by which men’s
efforts to understand economic phenomena produce, improve, and pull
down analytic structures in an unending sequence. And it
is
one of
the main theses to be established in this book that
fundarnentally
this
process does not differ from the analogous processes in other fields of
knowledge
’
(p.
6).
This thesis pervades the whole book and determines its general
pattern to such a large extent that it is surprising that it should have
provoked
so
little comment from critics. For example, in none of the
J.
A.
Schumpeter,
History
of
Economic
Analysis
$1?54).
On the distinction between
‘
economic analysis
,
political economy
’
and
‘
economic thought
’,
see
Part
I
of
the
History, passim,
and particularly pp.
38
et
seq.
1
1
2
R.
L.
MEEK
six
major review articles, which
I
have
so
far read, can it really be
said that there is anything like a proper recognition of the importance
which the thesis tended to assume in Schumpeter’s mind.3 In most of
them, in fact, it
is
hardly even mentioned. The chief reason for this
apparent failure to appreciate the full force of Schumpeter’s argument
is,
I
suppose, that the thesis in question is both a very familiar and a
very comfortable one, and it
is
difficult for those of us who have been
brought up on it to imagine that anyone should think it worth while
to take the great pains which Schumpeter in fact did to establish it.
Yet to Schumpeter it was far from being self-evident. It appeared to
him to be vitally necessary to defend it against attack-and in particu-
lar against the Marxian attack. Schumpeter’s attitude towards Marx,
indeed, affords the key to the proper understanding
of
the
History.
In this case, as in
so
many others. the true significance of the thesis
being advanced can be seen only when it is considered in relation to
the thesis being opposed.
‘What
a
pity, but at the same time, what a lesson and what a
challenge!’
(p.
433).
This revealing comment by Schumpeter on Marx
sums up extremely well his basic attitude towards him. It would be
too simple to say that Schumpeter believed that Man had asked the
right questions but givem the wrong answers to them, and that it was
his own duty to supply alternative answers.
One
can hardly sum up
the life-work
of
a thinker of Schumpeter’s calibre in terms of a single
generalisation such as this, although there is undoubtedly an important
element of truth in it. It would be more accurate to say of him, with
Haberler, that ‘all his life he was attracted by the grandeur of the
Marxian system
’
‘-in particular by Marx’s
‘
vision
’
of a capitalist
economy inexorably developing, always by virtue of its own internal
laws, towards its dissolution; but that at the same time he was
repelled by certain other aspects of Marx’s analysis-in particular by
the suggestion that a net surplus taking the form of profit was normally
yielded to the capitalist employer even in the absence of monopoly
and innovation, and by the associated idea that the capitalist economic
system
as
such
was racked by exploitation and inherent
‘
contradic-
tions’. The great force of this attraction and repulsion is clearly
3The review articles to which
I
am referring
are
those by
L.
Robbins
(Quarterly Journal of Economics,
February 1955),
0.
H.
Taylor
(Review
of
Economics and Statistics,
February 1955),
J.
Viner
(American Economic Review,
December 1954).
G.
B.
Richardson
(Oxford Economic Papers,
June 1955),
I.
M.
D. Little
(Economic History Review,
August 1955), and
F.
H.
Knight
(Southern Economic Journal,
January 1955). Comparison should be made with
the brief but fundamentally correct assessment by
A.
Smithies
in
Schumpeter,
Social Scientist,
edited by
S.
E.
Harris (1951). p.
21.
Schumpeter, Social Scientist,
p.
41.
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