PERSPECTIVES ON THE HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1988.tb01034.x |
| Published date | 01 February 1988 |
| Author | RogerE. Backhouse |
| Date | 01 February 1988 |
Sconich
lournol
of
Polrrical
Economy.
Vol.
35,
No.
I,
February
1908
0
1988
Scottish
Economic
Society
PERSPECTIVES ON THE HISTORY
OF
ECONOMIC THOUGHT
ROGER
E.
BACKHOUSE*
Department
of
Economics, University
of
Birmingham
A.
K.
DASGUPTA,
Epochs
of
Economic
Theory,
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985, pp.
x
+
155, €17.50 (hardback) €7.50 (paper-
back). ISBN
0631
137866 (hardback),
0
631 15584 8 (paperback).
I
IN-RODUCTION
The purpose of this book is, in the author’s
own words, “only
to
suggest a perspective
for viewing the development
of
economic
theory [7].” (Numbers standing alone in
square brackets are page references
to
Epochs
of
Economic Theory.)
Despite the
modesty
of
this aim, however, Dasgupta’s
thesis raises a number
of
very important
issues concerning both contemporary eco-
nomics and its history, and it is important
that these are addressed. The remainder
of
this introduction outlines Dasgupta’s main
claims, and the following sections discuss
some
of
the issues raised.
Epochs
of
Economic
Theory opens with
the claim that economic theories are
relative, the reason given for this being
that,
“Economists deal with a universe where
data are freakish and not valid univer-
sally, and where phenomena emerge
which were not only not known before
but had not existed before.
It
is of the
nature
of
economic science that
it
involves events and phenomena which
not only change complexion from time to
time but do not also occur at all places.
Problems that emerge as crucial at one
time may turn out to be totally irrelevant
*I
wish to thank Denis O’Brien
for
helpful comments on an earlier draft,
though
I
alone am responsible
for
what
follows.
at another time
in
the same economy,
and those that are relevant
in
the context
of
one economy may well be irrelevant
elsewhere.
In
economics
old
theories do
not die. And they
do
not
die
not
because
one
is
built
on
the other, bur because one
ir
independent
of
the other.
(2,
emphasis
added]”
Dasgupta thus objects
to
the notion that
there is continuity in the development
of
economic science
[I],
though he does admit
the possibility that “there is often progress
from a lower
to
a higher level
of
abstraction
in a particular line
of
analysis”, citing as an
example the passage from Adam Smith’s
concept of the division
of
labour
to
the
modern theory of increasing returns
[4].
Given this position
of
extreme relativism,
Dasgupta proceeds to argue that the history
of
economic thought should be analysed in
terms
of
a series
of
what he, using
terminology introduced by Gide and Rist
(1909),
calls “epochs”. Different epochs
are characterised by economists asking
different questions, the economic theory
of
one epoch being independent
of
that of
other epochs. Though these epochs have
something in common with Kuhnian para-
digms, Dasgupta claims that the implied
breaks in the history of economic thought
“have
not
at any stage brought about
anything like a revolution
[S].”
When it
comes
to
identifying the main epochs in the
history
of
economic thought Dasgupta finds
three, which he labels “classical”, “mar-
ginalist” and “Keynesian”, these being
concerned with the problems
of
growth,
resource allocation and stagnation
respectively.
Though
Epochs
of
Economic Theory
opens with the argument that economic
theories are necessity relative because
of
the non-uniform and changing nature
of
the
world they are seeking
to
explain, Dasgupta
explains the shift of interest associated with
97
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