Product Description
Economics has become a monolithic science, variously described as formalistic and autistic with neoclassical orthodoxy reigning supreme. So argue Dimitris Milonakis and Ben Fine in this new major work of critical recollection. The authors show how economics was once rich, diverse, multidimensional and pluralistic, and unravel the processes that lead to orthodoxy's current predicament. The book details how political economy became economics through the desocialisation and the dehistoricisation of the dismal science, accompanied by the separation of economics from the other social sciences, especially economic history and sociology. It is argued that recent attempts from within economics to address the social and the historical have failed to acknowledge long standing debates amongst economists, historians and other social scientists.This has resulted in an impoverished historical and social content within mainstream economics. The book ranges over the shifting role of the historical and the social in economic theory, the shifting boundaries between the economic and the non-economic, all within a methodological context. Schools of thought and individuals, that have been neglected or marginalised, are treated in full, including classical political economy and Marx, the German and British historical schools, American institutionalism, Weber and Schumpeter and their programme of Socialokonomik, and the Austrian school. At the same time, developments within the mainstream tradition from marginalism through Marshall and Keynes to general equilibrium theory are also scrutinised, and the clashes between the various camps from the famous Methodenstreit to the fierce debates of the 1930s and beyond brought to the fore.The prime rationale underpinning this account drawn from the past is to put the case for political economy back on the agenda. This is done by treating economics as a social science once again, rather than as a positive science, as has been the inclination since the time of Jevons and Walras. It involves transcending the boundaries of the social sciences, but in a particular way that is in exactly the opposite direction now being taken by 'economics imperialism'. Drawing on the rich traditions of the past, the reintroduction and full incorporation of the social and the historical into the main corpus of political economy will be possible in the future.
About the Author
University of Crete, Greece School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK
Paperback: 374 pages Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (December 9, 2008) Language: English ISBN-10: 041542321X ISBN-13: 978-0415423212 Contents
Preface xii
1 Introduction 1
1 General outline 1
2 Main themes 2
3 Main objectives 9
2 Smith, Ricardo and the first rupture in economic thought 11
1 Introduction 11
2 Classical political economy: general themes 13
3 Smith’s dualisms, Ricardo’s abstractions 16
4 The first methodological rupture 22
5 Concluding remarks 26
3 Mill’s conciliation, Marx’s transgression 27
1 Introduction 27
2 John Stuart Mill: consolidation and crisis 28
3 Karl Marx, dialectics and history 33
4 Concluding remarks 44
4 Political economy as history: Smith, Ricardo, Marx 46
1 Introduction 46
2 The invisible hand of history? 49
3 Ricardo with Smith as point of departure 53
4 The dialectics of value 58
5 Concluding remarks 68
5 Not by theory alone: German historismus 71
1 Introduction 71
2 The making of the German Historical School 73
3 Methodological foundations 78
4 Laws of development 82History without theory? 85
6 Concluding remarks 88
6 Marginalism and the Methodenstreit 91
1 Introduction 91
2 Marginalism and the second schism in economic thought 93
3 Carl Menger and the Methodenstreit 101
4 The aftermath 109
5 Concluding remarks 115
7 The Marshallian heritage 119
1 Introduction 119
2 Setting the scene: dehomogenising marginalism 120
3 From soaring eagle … 127
4 … to vulgar vultures? 134
5 Concluding remarks 137
8 British historical economics and the birth of economic
history 141
1 Introduction 141
2 British historicism: T.E. Cliffe Leslie 142
3 The birth of economic history 148
4 Concluding remarks 154
9 Thorstein Veblen: economics as a broad science 157
1 Introduction 157
2 Institutions, evolution and history 159
3 Veblen versus marginalism, Marx and the Historical
School 162
4 Veblen’s evolutionary scheme 164
5 Method and history in Veblen’s work 170
6 Concluding remarks 174
10 Commons, Mitchell, Ayres and the fin de siècle of
American institutionalism 175
1 Introduction 175
2 Commons’ compromises 176
3 Mitchell’s empiricism 182
4 Ayres’ Veblenian themes 186
5 Concluding remarks 188
11 In the slipstream of marginalism: Weber, Schumpeter and
Sozialökonomik 191
1 Introduction 191
2 Constructing social economics or Sozialökonomik 193
3 From value neutrality and ideal types to methodological
individualism 198
4 Constructing histoire raisonée: Sombart and Weber 202
5 Concluding remarks 214
12 Positivism and the separation of economics from sociology 216
1 Introduction 216
2 Twixt logical and non-logical: Pareto and the birth of
sociology 219
3 Lionel Robbins: squaring off the marginalist revolution 224
4 Souter’s reaction 228
5 Introducing positivism: From Hutchison to Friedman 230
6 Talcott Parsons and the consolidation of sociology 236
7 Concluding remarks 243
13 From Menger to Hayek: the (re)making of the Austrian
School 245
1 Introduction 245
2 Carl Menger and the slippage from marginalism 246
3 The formation of the Austrian School: Böhm-Bawerk and
Wieser 250
4 Leaving marginalism behind: from Mises’ praxeology … 254
5 … To Hayek’s spontaneous orders 259
6 Concluding remarks 267
14 From Keynes to general equilibrium: short- and long-run
revolutions in economic theory 268
1 Introduction 268
2 No micro without macro: the rise of Keynesianism 270
3 Keynes and the philosophical foundations of economics 275
4 General equilibrium or trooping the techniques 279
5 Paul Samuelson: synthesis versus revolution? 285
6 Concluding remarks 293
15 Beyond the formalist revolution 295
1 Introduction 295
2 From implosion of principle to explosion of application 297
3 Concluding remarks 308
Notes 309
References 327
Indexes 356
Contents xi
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