Página 37 - Coordinación de Servicios de Información

ECONOMICS IN PERSPECTIVE:
A CRITICAL HISTORY
• uFew economists wish to reject wh at was accepted in their ear–
lier educa tion and subsequently defended and e laborated in their
own teaching, writing and schola rly discourse. To abandon what
they h ave learned and taught is to admit to ea rlier e rror; this we all
resis!. As we do (jt may be added), the demanding thought required
in accommodating to change.
Accomadation to changing reality is also resisted, as in the pas t,
because of the desire to view economics as a science. In the aca–
demic world, where economics is taught, the standard of intellec–
tual precis ion is set by the hard sciences. Economists and other so–
cia l scientists, perhaps inevitably, aspire to the in tell ectual reputa–
tion of chemis ts, physicists, biologists and mi crobiologists. This
requires that the ultimate ly valid propostions of economics be es–
sentia lly g iven, Ike the structure of neutrons, protons, atoms and
molecules. Once fulIy discovered, they are known forever. Unchang–
ing also, it is held, is human motivation in a compe titive market
economy. Such fixed and permanent truths allow economists to view
their subject as a science. [But], it is the pa radox of the discipline
that it is this wish to so see itself tha t commits economics to an
obsolescence in a changing wo rld that, by any scientific standa rd,
is to be deplored .
Also, holding the subject to the past, and to the classical model,
might be called a techni cal escape from rea lity. The central assump–
tion of classical economics -pure competition in the market extend–
ing on from the prices of p roducts to the pricing of the factors of
production- lends itself admirably to technical and mathematica l
refinements. This, in tum, is tested no t by its representation of the
real world
but by its internallogic and the theoretical and mathematical com–
petence that is brought to bea r in anal ysis and exposition. From
this c1 0sed intelleclual exercise which is fascinating to its partici–
p ants, intruders and critics a re excluded (often by their own choice),
as be ing techni cally unqualified . And, even mo re significantly, the
reality of economic Iife is excluded, which, alas, is not, in its varied
disorde r, suitable for ma thematical replica tion.
English for Economisls 35