Politics Index

AFP PorchCast #23

November 19th, 2008 admin

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Yes Virginia, There Is a Role for Cultural Theory

November 18th, 2008 admin

A point was raised in the comments to my previous post, which deserves a separate post, so here goes.

Shouldn't Austrians do or at least acknowledge cultural theory?  (The claim was, if I recall, we don't appreciate its import.)

We've already been there. Back in the day we formed with Don Lavoie a weekly readings group studying cultural theory.  Heck, we even read Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida. I was off on my own reading Adorno's criticisms of the spontaneity of jazz music, Marcuse's criticisms of pop news and entertainment in Time Magazine, and who knows what else.  I still have their books, all marked up, on my shelf. Yes, Frankfort School Theorists, who nevertheless were pioneers in the fields of cultural analysis from, of course, a Marxist-structuralist approach.  Strive to do it over from an Austrian approach.

We went further.  Don and Pete and I attended Peter Berger's three week faculty seminar on Economy, Values, and Culture.  (Yes, Berger the co-author of The Social Construction of Reality.) Pete and I discussed and debated with Dan Rose, the radical ethnographer.  Pete and I wrote up a $10,000,000 proposal to establish a center at the University of Kansas that would focus upon comparative political economy and ethnographic research.  I vividly recall Dan banging on the door to my dorm room, asking what all the noise and debate and laughter was all about.  He was surprised to see only Pete and I, who, in Dan's words, "were manically writing in a fog of ideas and cigar smoke." He could not believe that this was all done in the context of a multi-million dollar grant idea that just popped into our heads.

What's the point?  We were hoping to establish a cultural-analysis program for applied Austrian economics. 

What followed?  Pete went on his "Just Do It" Nike philosophy -- go out and do the ethnography.  One of my main criticisms here was not that our theory wasn't developed enough, but that we (i.e., Pete's students) don't know how to do ethnography.  Ethnography is not simply standing three weeks at a street corner in Moscow taking it all in.  I learned at least this much from the ethnographers (methodological and applied) whom I had read, let alone from Rose's Living the Ethnographic Life.

I had first hand experience:  my original proposal for my Fulbright grant -- which was accepted -- was to "get inside" a bureau of the planning apparatus and try to make sense from the planner's perspective of their everyday life and surroundings.  Language, and esp. political barriers, prohibited such a project.  I still think I could've done a "Jokes from a Planning Office" paper (a twist on Hop Jan's "Notes from a Planning Office").  Hell, I think we should now do a "Jokes from the Treasury Office" paper.

But there have been real successes.  Lavoie and Emily Chamlee-Wright published a book on the subject.  Virgil Storr has been doing fine applied cultural research. 

What about a cultural analysis of the profession?  Well, Pete and I had that idea very early on, and hoped to use some of that 10 mil for a major research project on the impact of the Ford Foundation and the Cowles Commission in shaping contemporary economic theory and debate, tenure, promotion, professional expectations, and so on.

Alas, it hasn't happened.  Maybe Pete and I should edit such a work, and encourage some of Pete's best students to write the chapters.  (Pete, we need $$$!)

Anyway, the call for cultural analysis by and among Austrians is nothing new.  Some of it has already been accomplished.  Some of it is still promising. I don't know of the other heterodox schools that have launched such a project.  If they have, I'd like to see their results.

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Peter Leeson is Presenting at the Rational Choice Workshop

November 18th, 2008 admin

Pete will be presenting his “Pirational Choice” paper this evening at the famous Rational Choice Workshop at the University of Chicago Economics Dept. I believe the workshop is open to the public (7:30 pm Ro 329) so that those of you who live in Chicago can go and hear Gary Becker, Steven Levitt, Robert Lucas, Kevin Murphy, and others commenting on Pete’s work. Go Pete!

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The Beginning of Civilization?

November 18th, 2008 admin

As a sidewalk fan of archaeology, I find the idea of having found the cradle of civilization enthralling. While there's ultimately no way to be true...you must admit, this is really, really cool.

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Mises and Rothbard on Value-Free Economics

November 18th, 2008 admin

Ed Dolan's edited book, The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics (Sheed & Ward, 1976), is one of the great introductions to our School that seems to have been overlooked over the past decade.  I had read it with profit a quarter of a century ago.

The essay that stands out the most to me was Rothbard's "Praxeology, Value Judgments, and Public Policy."  I agreed with his criticism (yes, criticism) of Mises, but I always thought the criticism could be extended to Rothbard himself.

For the sake of my argument, let's assume, with Mises and Rothbard, that praxeology is value free.

The issue is whether or not the economist, in discussing and sharing his analysis of particular policies, is still engaged in value-free analysis. Rothbard quotes Mises:

If the economist states the outcome of his investigation by saying that a is a bad measure, he does not pronounce a judgment of value.  He merely states that from the point of view of those aiming at the goal p, the measure a is inappropriate.

This, of course, is a means-ends rationality which makes an immanent critique.  I've done it time and again.  We all should. (I know, "should" here is a value-judgment, too.)

Rothbard's criticism of Mises in a nutshell:

... the economist is supposed to be only a praxeologist, a technician, pointing out to his readers or listeners that they will all consider a policy "bad" once he reveals its full consequences.  But ingenious as it is, the attempt completely fails.  For how could Mises know what the advocates of the particular policy consider desirable? How could he know what their value scales are now or what they will be when the consequences of the measure appear? One of the great contributions of praxeology...is that the praxeologist, the economist, doesn't know what anyone's value scales are except as those value preferences are demonstrated by a person's concrete action.

For example:

... how could Mises know that some advocates of price control do not want shortages?

So that:

We see, therefore, that Mises's attempt to advocate laissez-faire while remaining value-free, by assuming that all of the advocates of government intervention will abandon their position once they learn of its consequences, falls completely to the ground.

So as not to make my post turn into a paper, let's be brief.  Rothbard's point is clear, and to me correct:  once the economist discusses policy outcomes with policy makers, he is doing so as a citizen informed by praxeology.  (And I would add:  even if he does know their values.) He cannot possibly remain value free.  (An example:  even the GMU engineer who discusses ways to make trains run on time on a trip to Nazi Germany cannot be value free, as he is unwittingly supporting the goals of the Nazi regime. And I would add: even if the engineer gives them the wrong analysis just to screw them up and defeat their plans.)

If Rothbard is correct -- and I believe he is -- even a Boettke discussing the unintended consequences of planning and transition at a lecture in Prague cannot possibly be value free.  It doesn't matter whether those in Prague favor or hesitate with the transition to markets.  Pete is providing them the means to reach their own goals.

But -- and still being brief -- I think Rothbard himself is also caught in a contradiction, as I concluded when I first read this chapter.  He constricts it to policy discussions.  But I believe even the economist who publishes and presents even "purely praxeological" or "purely theoretical" analysis -- say, the economics of time preference alone -- is also acting as a citizen.  Even in the classroom.  Pete (and all of us) cannot possibly be value free.  We are sharing our analysis and assuming that (at least some!) of our students will absorb it and make use of it as they see fit, following their own value scales that can of course change over time.

In this sense, it is not only the economist as policy analyst and the economist as policy advocate (which, of course, is the clearest case against value freedom) but even the purely theoretical economist in any social context who becomes a "citizen" and abandons value freedom.  If Rothbard is correct, he must take his own argument to this next step.  Yes, even when I define what a capital good is, and share that definition with anyone else, in any social relationship, I am acting as a scholar, a professor, a citizen. 

I'm doing that right now on this blog.

Pete ignores this in his arguments that economics is value free.  Even his arguments are those of Pete the citizen.  Yes, he often offers means-ends analysis, but he does so as a member of a community.  We all should offer that kind of analysis -- I even insist upon it! -- but we must also acknowledge that we no longer are value free.

How can an economist qua economist remain value free?  Only when he reads or creates an analysis and then shuts his mouth to the world.  And, I hope, Pete never does that!

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