Epistemological Problems of Economics. Людвиг фон Мизес

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СКАЧАТЬ is the aim of the essays collected in this volume to explode the errors implied in the negativistic doctrines rejecting economic theory and thereby to clear the way for the systematic analysis of the phenomena of human action and especially also of those commonly called economic. They represent, as it were, the necessary preliminary study for the thorough scrutiny of the problems involved such as I tried to provide in my book, Human Action, a Treatise of Economics.*

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      Some of the authors whose statements I analyzed and criticized in these essays are little known to the American public. But the ideas which they developed and which I tried to refute are not different from the doctrines that were taught by many other authors, either American or foreign, whose books were written in English or are available in English-language translations and are amply read in this country. Such is, for instance, the case with the doctrines of the late professor of the University of Berlin, Alfred Vierkandt. In order to pass over in silence the fact that men, guided by ideas and resorting to judgments of value, choose between different ends and between different means for the attainment of the ends chosen, Vierkandt tried to reduce the actions and achievements of men to the operation of instincts. What man brings about is, he assumed, the product of an instinct with which he has been endowed for this special purpose. Now this opinion does not differ essentially from that of Frederick Engels as especially expressed in his most popular book, the Anti-Dühring,^† nor from that of William McDougall and his numerous American followers.

      In examining the tenets of Mr. Gunnar Myrdal I referred to the German-language edition of his book, Das Politische Element in der Nationalökonomischen Doktrinbildung, published in 1932. Twenty-one years later this German-language edition served as the basis for the English translation by Mr. Paul Streeten.^‡

      In his “Preface to the English Edition” Mr. Myrdal declares that this edition is “apart from a few cuts and minor editorial rearrangements” an “unrevised translation of the original version.” He does not mention that my criticism of his analysis of the ends that wage-earners want to attain by unionism induced him to change essentially the

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      wording of the passage concerned. In perusing my criticism, the reader is asked to remember that it refers to the literally quoted passage from pages 299 f. of the German edition and not to the purged text on page 200 of the English edition.

      A further observation concerning the terminology used is needed. When, in 1929, I first published the second essay of this collection, I still believed that it was unnecessary to introduce a new term to signify the general theoretical science of human action as distinguished from the historical studies dealing with human action performed in the past. I thought that it would be possible to employ for this purpose the term sociology, which in the opinion of some authors was designed to signify such a general theoretical science. Only later did I realize that this was not expedient and adopted the term praxeology.¹

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      Mr. George Reisman translated from the text published in 1933 under the title Grundprobleme der Nationalökonomie and the subtitle Untersuchungen über Verfahren, Aufgaben und Inhalt der Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftslehre. The translation was prepared for publication by Mr. Arthur Goddard. The translator and the editor carried on their work independently. I myself did not supply any suggestions concerning the translation nor any deviations from the original German text.

      It remains for me to extend my heartiest thanks both to Mr. Reisman and to Mr. Goddard. I am especially grateful to the directors and staff members of the foundation² that is publishing this series of studies.

      Ludwig von Mises

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PREFACE TO THE GERMAN EDITION

      Misunderstandings about the nature and significance of economics are not due exclusively to antipathies arising from political bias against the results of inquiry and the conclusions to be necessarily drawn from them. Epistemology, which for a long time was concerned solely with mathematics and physics, and only later began to turn its attention to biology and history as well, is presented with apparently insuperable difficulties by the logical and methodological singularity of economic theory. These difficulties stem for the most part from an astonishing unfamiliarity with the fundamental elements of economics itself. When a thinker of Bergson’s caliber, whose encyclopedic mastery of modern science is virtually unparalleled, expresses views that show he is a stranger to a basic concept of economics,¹ one can well imagine what the present situation is with regard to the dissemination of knowledge of that science.

      Under the influence of Mill’s empiricism and psychologism, logic was not prepared for the treatment of the problems that economics presents to it. Moreover, every attempt at a satisfactory solution was frustrated by the inadequacy of the objective theory of value then prevailing in economics. Nevertheless, it is precisely to this epoch that we owe the most valuable contributions to the elucidation of the problems of the scientific theory of economics. For the successful treatment of these questions, Senior, John Stuart Mill, and Cairnes satisfied in the highest degree the most important prerequisite: they themselves were economists. From their discussions, which are set in the framework of

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      the psychologistic logic prevailing at that time, emerged ideas that required only fecundation by a more perfect theory of the laws of thought to lead to entirely different results.

      The inadequacy of empiricist logic hampered the endeavors of Carl Menger still more seriously than those of the English thinkers. His brilliant Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften² is even less satisfactory today than, for example, Cairnes’ book on methodology. This is perhaps due to the fact that Menger wanted to proceed more radically and that, working some decades later, he was in a position to see difficulties that his predecessors had passed over.

      Elucidation of the fundamental logical problems of economics did not make the progress that might have been expected from these splendid beginnings. The writings of the adherents of the Historical and the Kathedersozialist Schools in Germany and England and of the American Institutionalists confused, rather than advanced, our knowledge of these matters.³

      It is to the investigations of Windelband, Rickert, and Max Weber that we owe the clarification of the logical problems of the historical sciences. To be sure, the very possibility of a universally valid science

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      of human action escaped these thinkers. Living and working in the age of the Historical School, they failed to see that sociology and economics can be and, indeed, are universally valid sciences of human action. But this shortcoming on their part does not vitiate what they accomplished for the logic of the historical sciences. They were impelled to consider these problems by the positivist demand that the traditional historical disciplines—the moral sciences—be repudiated as unscientific and replaced by a science of historical laws. They not only demonstrated the absurdity of this view, but they brought into relief the distinctive logical character of the historical sciences in connection with the doctrine of “understanding,” to the development of which theologians, philologists, and historians had contributed.

      No notice was taken—perhaps deliberately—of the fact that the theory of Windelband and Rickert also involves an implicit repudiation of all endeavors to produce an “historical theory” for the political sciences. In their eyes the historical sciences and the nomothetic⁴ sciences are logically distinct. A “universal economics,” that is, СКАЧАТЬ