OXFORD REVIEW OF , VOL. 15, NO. 4

HOW SHOULD WE WRITE THE HISTORY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY ?

E. ROY WEINTRAUB Duke University1

The modern looks at a textbook history of nineteenth-century economics and wonders what, for the twentieth century, will correspond to the chapter titles of ‘Malthus’, ‘Ricardo’, ‘The Mills’, ‘Marx’, and ‘The Rise of Marginalism’. Will survive editing? Will rate its own section? Will Keynes be a hero or a goat? look to the historian and wonders how the historian decides what is important, and how we go about deciding what will go into a future history book. Eschewing narratives of progress, this paper surveys alternative historiographies for constructing a history of twentieth-century economics, and suggests that the new discipline of science and technology studies provides a number of useful frameworks for telling the story.

I. INTRODUCTION field. Faced with any claim of an exclusive or superior path to historical insight, the prudent response is to walk away Historians of science are imposing order on segments of murmuring, ‘live and let live’. (Reingold, 1991, pp. 364–5) the past, often in a ‘narrowing’ or ‘delimited’ way. Some- thing of this nature is inevitable when dealing with, to The modern economist looks at a textbook history of paraphrase William James, the great, blooming confusion nineteenth century economics and wonders what, of reality, past or present. The discourse of students of the history of science now admits more phenomena to the for the twentieth century, will correspond to the field, but without completely expunging older modes. chapter titles of ‘Malthus’, ‘Ricardo’, ‘The Mills’, Each of us can validly take a different slice of what we ‘Marx’, and ‘The Rise of Marginalism’. Will Mon- consider the subject. History of science is an eclectic etarism survive editing? Will Game Theory rate its

1 Surveying twentieth century economics, or economic thought, is a curious task, made more so by the fact that from whomever one seeks advice, one receives a scolding for leaving something out of the account. Without then holding them responsible for what appears here, I thank Gianni Toniolo, Neil De Marchi, and Craufurd Goodwin for their comments and arguments. I apologize to all those authors in my sub-discipline whose works could have been cited, but were not, because of space limitations.

© 1999 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS AND THE OXFORD REVIEW OF ECONOMIC POLICY LIMITED 139 OXFORD REVIEW OF ECONOMIC POLICY, VOL. 15, NO. 4 own section? Will Keynes be a hero or a goat? More generally, each method for appraising scien- Economists look to the historian and wonder how tific work attempts to distinguish successes from the historian decides what is important, and how we failures in science, and each defends the ‘right’ go about deciding what will go into a future history method as the one which produces successes. book. To economists, our task as historians appears Consequently, all alternative ‘methodologies’ for to be to ask how economic thought has changed economics would appear to have implicit winners over the century, to address the issue of why it has and losers in economic work: the winning economic changed, what are the significant issues associated ideas, those which emerged from the community’s with those changes, and what are the implications work, are the exemplars of the right methodology. for the future of economic thought. As befits a scientific discipline, this seems to most economists to require the historian to document/explain the II. INDUCTIVIST HEROES progress in economics over the century. Yet as we will see in what follows, while the idea of progress As befits a fin-de-siècle exercise, let us begin by makes sense to economists, it is problematic to asking how historians would have appraised twen- historians. tieth century winners and losers were the method- ology of 1900 to be treasured today. It is fairly clear Nevertheless it is certainly appropriate for the eco- that, at the turn of the twentieth century, science nomics community to ask ‘How do we know what itself, a fortiori economic science, was generally will endure of the twentieth century’s economics?’ understood to be inductivist. Many educated indi- Let me then begin to answer this question by viduals had read Karl Pearson’s The Grammar of describing several ways some historians of science, Science (1911), published in various editions be- and thus historians of economics, have sought to tween 1892 and the first decades of the twentieth ground their judgements in particular appraisal cri- century, and supposed it to be a fairly coherent teria. As we will see, each criterion carries with it a picture of exactly how science proceeded. Pearson ‘right’ way to narrate the history of twentieth century summed up his discussion of the method of science economics, and thus each implies a set of ‘chapter by arguing that titles’ for the century’s history of economics. the scientific method is marked by the following features: In his paper, ‘History of Science and its Rational (a) careful and accurate classification of facts and obser- Reconstructions’, Imre Lakatos (1971) argued that vation of their correlation and sequence; (b) the discov- every particular philosophy of science, that is every ery of scientific laws by aid of the creative imagination; system which develops a normative reconstruction (c) self-criticism in the final touchstone of equal validity for all normally constituted minds. (Pearson, 1911, p. 37) of science and the development of scientific knowl- edge,2 carries with it an associated historiography of Pearson, a phenomenologist, argued that the exter- science. For it is not the case that history of science nal world provided sense impressions which the provides case studies on which philosophers may human being interpreted through brain activity. Using test alternative conceptions of how science oper- the metaphor of the brain as a central telephone ates, but rather that each particular conception of exchange, Pearson had the scientists operating as how science operates constrains the narratives that interpreters of the messages from nature, classify- can be constructed in the history of science: ‘each ing and reconstructing data. The facts of science, internal historiography has its characteristic victori- and thus the facts of economics, ‘excite the mind to ous paradigms’ (Lakatos, 1971, p. 104). For example: the formation of constructs and conceptions, and these again, by association and generalization, fur- the inductivist historian recognizes only two sorts of genuine scientific discoveries: hard factual propositions nish us with the whole range of material to which the and inductive generalizations. These and only these scientific method applies’ (Pearson, 1911, p. 74). constitute the backbone of his internal history. When writing history, he looks out for them—finding them is What then might a forward-looking economist in quite a problem. (Lakatos, 1971) 1900 have forecast to be the important kinds of 2 In economics, these philosophical systems are called methodologies.

140 E. R. Weintraub economic analyses? It is unfortunate that econo- and Arthur Burns and later , Anna mists did not have a David Hilbert, who at the World Schwartz, and others. They would feature as well Congress of Mathematics in 1900 set out what he work on cycles connected to the NBER regarded to be the important unsolved problems in project, and sponsored by the Rockefeller Founda- mathematics, for with such a list historians of math- tion in institutes in Europe in the inter-war years ematics have been able to trace research agendas (Rotterdam, Vienna, Kiel, etc.) placing individuals in a number of different sub-fields of mathematics such as Jan Tinbergen, and perhaps Ragnar Frisch, over much of this century, allowing some con- in positions of prominence. Our stories of scientific textualization of ideas such as success and improve- success would highlight the economic ideas of ment and progress within the discipline of math- , whose careful classification sys- ematics. Absent a Hilbert, let us instead consider the tem of input–output tables allowed a finer and finer remarkable essay, Man in the Biological and representation of the structure of particular econo- Social Sciences, by Vito Volterra (1906), given on mies, and the usefulness of those representations in the occasion of his 1900 inauguration as Professor managing the command economies of countries in of Theoretical Physics at the University of Rome. the former Soviet bloc. The inductivist Pantheon Volterra, talking about the role that mathematics would include Simon Kuznets, and James Meade was likely to play in applied work, in economics and and Colin Clark, whose development of the ideas of biology specifically, in the new century, argued that: national income accounting gave prominence to the collection and classification of the facts of the [therefore, for economists it is necessary that they] first domestic economy, facts which could be arrayed establish concepts in a way that allows the introduction of measures, and from those measures discover laws, and understood in a Baconian fashion to allow from those laws work back to the hypothesis, then by theorizing to proceed. The work of Edward Denison means of analysis, deduce from the hypothesis a science and Moses Abramovitz would likewise appear with which reasons in a rigorously logical manner about ideal prominence in the stories of the successful work in beings, compares consequences to reality, rejects or economics. Related stories would address the ac- transforms the recycled fundamental hypothesis as soon tivities of the Cowles Commission in the United as a contradiction appears between the results of the States, and the League of Nations statistical work, calculation and the real world, and in this manner suc- and the activities of the Bureau of Labor Statistics ceeds in guessing new facts and new analogies, or in the United States, and the statistical offices of the deduces once again from the present state what the past ILO, OECD, etc., for grew out of was and what the future will be.3 such activity. Trygve Haavelmo, Lawrence R. Klein, For Volterra, inductivist arguments proceed by the Herman Wold, Abraham Wald, Tjalling Koopmans, development of facts, and the construction of theo- and so many others figure large in the tale. The story ries based upon these facts in a rigorous fashion, by of economic thought in the twentieth century then which Volterra himself meant that the models of becomes a story of understanding the domestic rational mechanics provide an appropriate meta- economy and the world economy through increased phor for economic argumentation. understanding of the structure of these entities as defined by the data-generating processes. The data If we think that science proceeds through the themselves describe the processes, and econo- accumulation of instances and the construction of mists’ willingness to collect the data and to use those theories by building on data, and rationalizing data to data to shape the profession’s understanding repre- generate new ideas which themselves can be con- sents a triumph of economic thought in the twentieth fronted with data, we can construct various kinds of century. narratives about the progress of economic thought in the twentieth century, and our hall of heroes Such descriptive work was hardly possible in the quickly fills with some statuary. The stories which nineteenth century. Statistics themselves, as an develop from such a historiography would certainly object and as a discipline concerned with the ob- feature the work of the National Bureau of Eco- jects, were just coming into being. Theories of nomic Research (NBER), with Wesley Clair Mitchell descriptive statistics and classical statistical meth-

3 Translation by Caroline Benforado, for the author.

141 OXFORD REVIEW OF ECONOMIC POLICY, VOL. 15, NO. 4 odologies as they developed over the decades of the tive statement of how economics should be done, twentieth century present a story of progress as and why economics done in that way could be a real more and more data were developed and were science like physics. Popper’s argument was that better and better documented, and better and better science proceeds by a series of conjectures and integrated with other sources of data. Finally, the refutations, by which bold hypotheses are ruthlessly linkage of data to other fields of inquiry is a story of subject to attempts at falsification. A real science the computer, and the possibility of control of econo- holds all propositions and theories to be provisional, mies based on the collection of data about those while serious scientists attempt to refute particular economies, for without high-speed computing facili- conjectures or theories. Science progresses by the ties, modern data collection would still await theoriz- weeding out of error, and this self-correcting proc- ing. With high-speed computers, the data them- ess is what is meant by scientific progress. To write selves can tell the story. Whether or not the the history of science then, we need to look at of economists is in helping governments control the exemplars of good science, at instances where economy better, and whether the economies are knowledge was gained by the eradication of error. centrally planned economies or laissez-faire capi- But if for physics the paradigm of such good science talist democracies, the relationship of computation was the Michaelson–Morley experiment which failed to fact is a late twentieth century phenomenon. By to find evidence of the luminiferous ether, it is very century’s end, this line of argument melding data difficult to see evidence of progress in economics. with computation, absent deterministic theory, has The falsification of economic theory by empirical/ produced some views of the world in which under- statistical evidence is virtually unknown to econo- lying processes themselves are too complex in their mists: as the eminent historian of economics Mark dynamical properties to be described using simple Blaug (1980) has written, economists practice ‘in- theoretical models. Nevertheless, the complex dy- nocuous falsificationism’. For a historian wedded to namics produce data which have characteristics the Popperian view, twentieth century economic similar, it is argued, to the data produced by stock thought is a mélange of prescientific musings about markets and national economies. If such inductivism social problems wrapped in the language of science, characterizes the nature and development of eco- without any real science in evidence. nomic thought in the twentieth century, it is a story of increased content, and increased facility by econo- Undiscouraged, yet eager to find progress in eco- mists and their allies (demographers, statisticians, nomics, some economists pursued a more tolerant etc.) to provide accounts of the world which are variant of critical rationalism which developed from useful for the purposes of description and control. the writings of Popper’s student, Imre Lakatos. For From the inductivist perspective then, some of our Lakatos, science is done within what he called a history’s chapter titles might include: ‘scientific research programme’; the programme consists of a set of (‘hard core’) propositions held to • The National Bureau of Economic Research be true and irrefutable by those working in the • The Development of Econometrics programme, associated rules for constructing theo- • Input–Output Analysis ries based on those central premises (‘the positive • Accounting for Economic Performance heuristic’), and rules (‘the negative heuristic’) for • The Economy and the Computer excluding, as uninteresting or irrelevant, material outside the purview of the programme. Scientific analysis is carried out in the ‘protective belts’ of the III. CRITICAL RATIONALISM scientific research programme, which belts consist of theories developed from the heuristics. Progress Many economists who think about how economics occurs as the scope of the programme is extended is done, and how economic knowledge is con- to handle previously anomalous cases which are structed, have attended to the writings of the phi- explained by the theory or theories in the belts. losopher, Karl Popper. Since the late 1930s when Popper initially was packaged for economists by This framework has allowed some historians to tell Terrence Hutchinson, his ideas have been thought the story of twentieth century economics as the rise by some economists to provide a compelling norma- and fall, or the progress or degeneration, of various

142 E. R. Weintraub scientific research programmes (Latsis, 1976; the development of modern , say, Weintraub, 1985; Blaug and DeMarchi, 1991). the rational programmatic history focuses on par- Among programmes, the neoclassical research pro- ticular features which may or may not be historically gramme would be likely to be the most successful explanatory. For instance, the history might require since it has the largest number of economists work- a detailed sensitivity to the nuances of data collec- ing within it: its various hard-core propositions of tion and construction. But those features of data optimization subject to constraint, appropriate as- analysis are hardly touched on by a rational recon- sumptions on knowledge, and rules for constructing struction: for such, data simply ‘are’. The Lakatosian models based on such principles (while avoiding version of the ‘confrontation of theory by evidence’ building theories based on irrational activity, or is as historically unhelpful as the Popperian story. changing tastes, etc.—the negative heuristic), have Nevertheless, a Lakatosian framework produces been extended and deepened over the course of the histories of progress and degeneration, the rise and twentieth century so that the theories associated fall of congeries of ideas and theories and hypoth- with the neoclassical research programme have eses and evidence and training centres, and pro- themselves stabilized various knowledge claims in vides thus at least a sense of the vitality of economic economics. If there is a mainstream, this is it. There science. For that reason, perhaps, it still provides are alternative programmes, partially overlapping in economists with a sense of a heroic past, though the some cases with the neoclassical research pro- protagonists are the programmes, not the people. gramme. One might think of the Keynesian pro- The chapters of the book of twentieth century gramme as a particularly interesting one, which economic thought written attentive to these ideas developed in the 1930s and was successful and would carry titles such as: progressive through the 1970s when its predicted failures and theoretical difficulties, brought out by its • The Fall of Institutionalism confrontation with simultaneous and • Neoclassicism Triumphant , led to its relative degeneration with respect • The Rise and Fall of to the alternative neoclassical programme in its • The Degeneration of the Marxian Programme New Classical form.

In terms of alternative programmatic discussions, IV. REVOLUTIONS and narratives of the waxing and waning of particu- lar varieties of economic thought in the twentieth Another persuasive and convincing account, at least century, we can see the continuous degeneration of in the minds of many scientist-readers, of how what could be termed the Marxian research pro- science proceeds was presented in the important gramme, as its predictive failures in a scientific book by Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific sense became increasingly apparent, and anomalies Revolutions (1962). Kuhn argued that, in any par- could not be incorporated without ad hoc changes ticular time and place, science operates with an in the hard core of the programme. Specifically, established vision of the relevant disciplinary world: Soviet bloc predictions of growth of incomes and the intellectual framework of the science, and an material progress in states organized in accord with understanding of the problems that are open and Marxist–Leninist thought could not be sustained. unresolved within that framework, is the paradigm of the science. Scientists working within the para- One of the difficulties in considering economics in digm, engaged in what he termed normal science, terms of these notions, in terms of the methodology are solving the natural puzzles and problems that of scientific research programmes, is that the con- arise in the course of doing the work. On some frontation of theory with evidence is not so simple in occasions though, the established consensus begins economics as the philosophers’ accounts would to break down. Perhaps an anomaly is obvious, and suggest. Even more to the point, constraining histori- awkward, so that accommodating it leads to major cal narratives to identify characteristics of a incoherence within the established paradigm. Per- Lakatosian programme imposes a rational, not an haps certain experimental results, or phenomena, or historical, reconstruction on all the materials, and analytic issues, lead a number of individuals to see thus impoverishes the narrative. To tell the story of the scientific work differently. Kuhn refers to such

143 OXFORD REVIEW OF ECONOMIC POLICY, VOL. 15, NO. 4 cases as revolutionary episodes, for they change the ings of the economy itself, with alternative vocabu- fundamental culture of a scientific field: that which laries, rules for linking concepts, and understandings was understood is no longer understood in the same concerning the nature and significance of the inter- way, as people literally see and think differently. For connections (Dow, 1985). Kuhn, there are infrequent episodes in which scien- tific discourse changes in an irrevocable way: these The language of normal science and revolutionary ruptures he termed revolutions. Moreover, and it is episodes produces a heroic historiography. It is quite a more controversial claim, for Kuhn one of the obvious that in economics, as in other disciplines, features of revolutions is the fundamental incom- such a romantic vision recommends itself to the mensurability between the visions instantiated in the practitioners. Many economists quite favour the pre-revolutionary paradigm and the post-revolution- idea that the history of the twentieth century is a set ary paradigm. Individuals literally do not understand of chapters recounting how individual economists, the subject in the same way as they did before the with courage and tenacity, changed the nature of revolution. The problem-syllogism for us is: science practice, and so their favoured histories of econom- has revolutions; economics is a science; therefore, ics look at the discontinuities in economic thought, economics has revolutions. But has economics had the breaks, and attend to the features of the intellec- revolutions in Kuhn’s sense?4 tual and cultural landscape which led up to, and led away from, the revolution.5 A number of historians of economics, and econo- mists using the language freely, have answered Many historians of science abhor such histories, ‘yes’. For them, economic thought in the twentieth which makes the historian’s perspective rather century is a narrative of discontinuity: they speak of uncongenial to most economists.6 the marginalist or neoclassical revolution, the , the monopolistic The aim of historical scholarship is to demonstrate that revolution, the Sraffian revolution, the rational ex- science is a genuine historical process shaped by and shaping social and political agendas. The practising pectations revolution, the game-theory revolution, scientist has no privileged access to this history. . . . [T]he the econometric revolution, etc. (Black et al., 1973). fact that such an exercise is deemed to be subversive by From talk of the neoclassical or marginal revolution, scientists, underscores the essential tension between the to talk of the Keynesian revolution or the economet- two professions. . . . [S]cientists’ history is often reduced ric revolution, there is a sense of a break with the to a collection of anecdotes, or, as for instance in histori- past in a comprehensive fashion. For example, cal introductions to textbooks or also in personal ac- discussions of unemployment prior to Keynesian counts, presents a rational reconstruction of the develop- became literally incoherent from ment of scientific theories. In these accounts history a Keynesian framework, while, from a rational proceeds by theoretical breakthroughs attributed to sci- expectations perspective, Keynesian involuntary entists of particular brilliance and insight. These histories often serve disciplinary needs like constructing a re- unemployment literally makes no sense. Revolu- search tradition or legitimizing a new research field. (de tions explain why, say, Robert Lucas and James Chadarevian, 1997, p. 61, italics added) Tobin do not argue with one another in any produc- tive fashion, and why and Paul For a historian, that ‘essential tension’ produces not Samuelson each thought the other quite foolish merely a problem of narrative. concerning game theory, but why Samuelson and Tobin can argue productively about stimulating eco- For example, the historian regards most econo- nomic growth. From the Kuhnian perspective we mists’ stories of the Keynesian Revolution as an have not in fact two competing theories which can historical wasteland littered with legitimizing ac- be appraised, one against the other, on the basis of counts of the nature of the specific break which tests or the evidence per critical rationalism. In- made the difference (? effective de- stead, we have two alternative visions of the work- mand? ? futures markets?

4 For the record, Kuhn thought not. 5 The loveliest examples of this phenomenon can be found in autobiographical accounts by economists, see Szenberg (1992). 6 For an excellent example of this tension, see ’s ‘Out of the Closet: A Program for the Whig History of Economic Science’ (1987).

144 E. R. Weintraub ? involuntary unemployment? wage rigid- OTSOG-ery—the historian of economics works ity?). From the historian’s perspective, only recently with a meta-narrative of progress. Through one have we had productive work in this area by schol- mechanism or another, science and progress are ars such as Clarke (1998) and Skidelsky (1986). interlinked. Error is weeded out, truths are uncov- ered, and knowledge claims are stabilized through Nevertheless, for a history of twentieth century the application of particular and specific methods. In economic thought organized along such Kuhnian a related fashion, associated with the various meta- lines (acknowledging that Kuhn would have re- narratives of progress in economics is the fact that jected such accounts), chapter titles might include: economists’ traditional histories are ‘Whig histo- ries’, as historians commonly use the phrase: eco- • The Marginalist Revolution nomics today is better in a well-defined sense than • The Econometric Revolution economics yesterday, and the march of progress • The Keynesian Revolution and the Monetarist leads us ever forward into a territory of greater truth Counter-revolution and knowledge. It is, of course, for that reason that • The Revolution most economists are comfortable with the narra- • The Labour Economics Revolution tives of progress. To be socialized as an economist in school is to learn the current tools, techniques, methods, and appurtenances of the discipline, and V. OTSOG-ERY thus to have a great deal invested in the rectitude of current ideas. Today is better than yesterday, for Related to the revolution-induced histories, we may after all we are learning (investing our scarce also identify another less well-organized historio- human in) today’s theories. Most working graphy, one which has been termed On The Shoul- scientists (economists) are Whig historians at heart ders Of Giants (OTSOG), recalling Newton’s claim who believe that the best of the discipline’s knowl- that he saw so far only because he stood on the edge and practices are contained in the current shoulders of giants. Such heroic visions of science materials of the discipline. As a result, narratives call us to heed times when giants walked the earth constructed to lead up to the present in a progressive (Chicago in the 1930s, Harvard in the late 1930s, fashion seem, in fact, to be really, truly how it is. To Cambridge in the years of high theory, the LSE in the argue otherwise would appear to be either a quaint 1930s, MIT in the 1960s, Minnesota in the 1970s, antiquarianism, concerned for old ideas for their etc.). A history of economics, then, is a chronicle of own sake (whatever that means), or else a mis- the greats, and accounts of their interactions and guided critical attempt to attack current ideas based contributions. For what it is worth, this seems to be on an historical analysis of the origins (Keynesianism the accepted historiography of the committee which is wrong because ‘Bastard Keynesians’ misinter- awards the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. preted Keynes’s Chapter 17). For a history of the century’s economic thought organized along such lines, we need then only But ask how can one write the history of England or construct such chapters as:7 America in the twentieth century, or the history of French diplomacy in the twentieth century, or the • Frisch and Tinbergen history of Soviet aircraft engines in the twentieth • Arrow and Debreu and Hicks century. Is not the issue one of how one writes any • Koopmans and Kantorovich history? Once the problem is framed in this way, it • Nash, Harsanyi, and Selten becomes clear that Whig history, associated with the meta-narrative of progress, is but one of many historiographic alternatives. VI. SCIENCE STUDIES Indeed, there is an alternative framework for think- From all of these perspectives—inductivist, critical ing about science, and economics, and so there are rationalist, normal science/revolutionary science, alternative ways to write the history of twentieth

7 For the record, we note that such histories already exist. For an example, see Breit and Spencer (1995).

145 OXFORD REVIEW OF ECONOMIC POLICY, VOL. 15, NO. 4 century economics. We can begin to develop these VII. TAKING THE HISTORY OF ideas by asking: if one mistrusts all meta-narra- ECONOMICS SERIOUSLY tives—such as psychoanalysis, Marxian theory, the triumph of reason over superstition, manifest des- An example may be helpful here. As readers of this tiny, the progress of science—what can one theo- journal know better than most economists, a chroni- rize about science? How can one write a history of cle of economics in the twentieth century must have economics without forging one’s narrative from the a chapter, or several chapters, on economic policy, perspective of the progress that economists have or the roles of economic analysis in the larger made in understanding the economy, or solving political community. Governments and non-govern- economic problems, or producing better tools to mental organizations from transnational action groups solve problems? Are there any alternative models to eleemosynary institutions have, over the course available to scholars in the history of science that of the century, increasingly spoken the language of historians of economics can borrow? Does telling economics. From a time when the ‘ economy’ the story of economics in the twentieth century as a was considered by most political entities to stand fable with a moral called ‘science produces apart from political processes of advice and control, progress’ preclude historical narratives of rich- to the present day, in which rather the opposite state ness and complexity, what Geertz (1988) called of affairs rules, the role of economics has changed ‘thick accounts?’ in the specific sense that many of the intertwined communities which deal with policy issues now Recent years have produced answers which invoke speak the language of economics. But what history an a-normative perspective based not on asking of of scientific progress can tell this story? Certainly it science how it should be done, but rather how it is not the case that the Rockefeller Foundation was and is done. In thinking about science, the tested its theories of the . Certainly naturalistic turn—thinking about science by actually the British Labour Party did not change its position looking at how science is done and what scientists on the basis of accumulated falsifications of predic- do—is best represented by a group of sociologists of tions of the success of its policies on nationalization. science, later joined by philosophers and historians, Does the change in the Labour Party position on and others, under a banner called either ‘Science nationalized industries represent scientific progress, Studies’ or ‘Science and Technology Studies’, or or rather something else? ‘STS’ for short. This approach to thinking about science, and thus thinking about economics, looks If we cannot tell the story of a century’s changes in very specifically at practice, at the real engagement conceptualizing economic policy with a narrative of of individuals with human and non-human mate- scientific progress, what alternative narrative will rials. From discussions of human and material command attention? One natural way to tell this agencies, the resistance that the materials present story is with the vocabulary of (Bruno Latour’s) to human agency, the mutual stabilization of thought actors and networks. This particular STS frame- and practice, of theory and evidence, of data and work might begin with economists doing economics, experiment, of belief and knowledge, arises a view employing arguments, and working with represen- of science as a craft, an activity in which real people tations of economic behaviours which take shape, do real things. Lost is the grand vision of revolu- and gain epistemic power, through their instantiation tionary episodes, theories confronting data, and in networks8 of ideas (e.g. National Income), calcu- progress associated with greater and better knowl- lations (e.g. the National Income Deflator), repre- edge about the external world. What replaces such sentations (e.g. the open economy), institutions (e.g. stories are local narratives of laboratory life, of the Council of Economic Advisers), etc. Beliefs technological innovation, of ideas transformed by become knowledge in the relevant communities as argument. the networks are extended, and more agents and

8 For Latour (1987), networks are linked sets of actants, where actants are both human and non-human. The biology bench- scientist is an actant, as is the micro-organism she claims she observes with her instrument actant, etc. They are all in the network.

146 E. R. Weintraub more networks support the beliefs. Scientific knowl- the nascent developments in economic analysis of edge, for Latour, is extremely robust as it is ex- the intertwining of Cambridge mathematics with tended through so many material and non-material Cambridge economics cannot be overstated. More- actors. Latour’s vision depicts scientists attempting over as mathematics has changed in its conception to extend their networks, to interlink them with of itself, in the mathematical community’s under- others, to overcome obstacles, and to win tests of standing of what constitutes appropriate mathemat- epistemic power called trials of strength by over- ics, so too has economics been reconstructed. At coming objections of other scientists, by obtaining the beginning of the twentieth century rigorous better results in well-understood contests called mathematics meant basing mathematical argumen- predictions, etc. How might this set of ideas shape tation on physical models and real data, while by a the chapters we want to see in our history book? time late in the century rigorous mathematics has come to be associated with formalization in the This way of seeing economics, and the activity of sense of axiomatization, with precisely developed economists in this century, might begin by seeing chains of reasoning (Weintraub, 1998a). Conse- how the ideas which became most well-established quently, we have an economic theory which by the became knowledge. The history book we would end of the century reflects the more formalist write would concentrate less on topics such as approach that has found its way into mathematics general equilibrium theory, and more on the contests (Weintraub, 1998b). Histories of the interconnec- over trade restrictions in GATT, and the World tion of mathematics and economics thus provide a Bank. How did market economics come, by centu- different framework for talking about the evolution ry’s end, to dominate all other forms of narrating of economic ideas, and the forms in which those economic activity? We do not need a story of ideas are today expressed. progress to appreciate the remarkable changes over this century’s institutions, political discourse, and Likewise, the interconnection of economic analysis instruction of the young in favour of market econo- and physical science at the beginning of the century, mies. with appropriation of the rational mechanics and energy metaphor by economists into neoclassical Once we have freed ourselves from the tyranny that theory, is a story which casts other shadows. The narratives of scientific progress coerce us to write, Mirowski Thesis (Mirowski, 1989; DeMarchi, 1993) we can recognize there are many other ways to argues that much of the development of neoclassi- approach the history of economics in the twentieth cal economics can be understood in terms of the century. One chapter which might result would necessary developments of the energetics model. concern the sets of interconnections between eco- And just as physics underwent a probabilistic revo- nomics and other discourses of other disciplines. For lution with the rise of quantum mechanical explana- example, we might tell stories of how the intercon- tions, so too probabilistic theory found its way into nections between economics and mathematics have the heart of economic analysis through game theo- been viewed, used, exploited, and otherwise em- ry’s mixed strategy solutions, and with econometric ployed in this century, for by 1999 we can look back explanations superseding the view of econometrics and marvel at the absence of a mathematical eco- as the testing of deterministic theoretical proposi- nomics in the mainstream of the discipline earlier in tions. Finally, by century’s end, the abandonment of the century. As we recall, the development of deterministic theory and probabilistic theory in the economics as a discipline in the English-speaking physical sciences as discrete categories, and their world was connected to Marshall’s ability to obtain association under the flag of non-linear dynamics the Cambridge Senate’s permission to institute a and chaotic systems, has led a number of econo- Tripos in economic science around 1900. All stu- mists to seek explanatory frameworks in what is dents at Cambridge at that time did in fact take part coming to be called the ‘Sante Fe approach’. one of their Tripos in mathematics, which meant that most of their intellectual pursuits were connected to Or consider another alternative: one could structure mastering the arcana of Newtonian rational me- the discussion about economic thought in the twen- chanics, and Euclidian geometry. The influence tieth century by constructing a narrative of how upon Marshall, his Principles of Economics, and economic ideas have been translated across a

147 OXFORD REVIEW OF ECONOMIC POLICY, VOL. 15, NO. 4 scholarly profession’s boundary into communities 1991)—these disciplines have more or less gone of administrators and policy-makers. From the per- their separate professional ways, although some spective of ‘-in-use’ one could develop a techniques that appear to have originated in eco- meta-narrative in which progress is replaced by nomics have moved into sociology, for instance. worldly interventions. Discussing economic thought Some ideas in economics, such as social choice in the twentieth century from this perspective would theory, have moved back and forth across what encourage writing histories of eleemosynary foun- seems to be a permeable boundary with political dations, government agencies, political organiza- science. Is the field called a new tions, private political advocacy groups, and a whole set of ideas in economics, or a repackaging of ideas range of journalistic practices and news-reporting that sit uneasily between politics and economics? Or strategies. We do have some attempts to write these consider demography: this sub-discipline sits be- kinds of histories (e.g. Goodwin, 1981; Hall, 1989), tween economics and sociology, and economists but most historians of economics appear to be more and sociologists talk to one another in this area using concerned with the theoretical ideas themselves, economic ideas modified by the contextualized socio- and less how those ideas move and work in the logical discourse. Does not telling the story of larger polity. In such histories the twentieth century economic thought in the twentieth century involve looks quite different from textbook catalogues of discussions of these issues as well? These complex theoretical winners and losers; Keynesianism looks stories are ill-served by narratives of scientific progress. different to economists and bankers, and the histo- ries they understand are likewise quite different. Attending to such notions produces different histo- ries of economics. The histories allow us to ask Consider the issues of and devel- interesting and complex—‘thick’ (Geertz, 1988)— opment. Economic thought in this area, a pastiche of questions: if there is no presupposition that there is , macroeconomic theory, one and only one right way for economic analysis to labour economics, , public fin- proceed, one and only one way in which economics ance, etc., is intertwined with the beliefs and needs can modify itself, the histories can reconstruct of national governments operating in an internation- economists engaging in controversy and ending al context. Histories of the and the those controversies. From such a perspective, eco- International Monetary Fund locate their role in a nomics in the twentieth century becomes a human discussion of economic thought in the twentieth activity in which many individuals are engaged in a century, suggesting that those institutions are hardly complex, locally situated, and contingent conversa- passive with respect to economic ideas which flow into tion, where the rules for community membership are them from the community of academic economists. fluid and conventions of discourse are communally well understood. Another strategy for looking at, and thinking about, economic thought in the twentieth century involves We can then revise our book on twentieth century seeing the connections between economic thought economics to include such chapters as: and thought in other social disciplines. How have economic ideas moved into sociological discourse, • Economists, Economic Ideas, and Economic the networks of political scientists, anthropologists, Policy and historians? At the beginning of the century • Economic Ideas and World Development social sciences were more or less monolithic as • Economics Among the Scholarly Disciplines there was an indistinct boundary between econom- • How Economics Has Made the Twentieth Cen- ics, politics, sociology, and anthropology. But in the tury Prosperous. early years of the twentieth century (Ross, 1991) the various social sciences themselves began to separate one from another, adopting their own VIII. SOCIALIZATION separate investigative logics and rhetorical strate- gies. Though there were unifying features, and Too often histories of economics engage the charm- ideas that moved across disciplines—such as ‘equi- ing conceit that economic ideas are autonomous librium’ (Russet, 1966), or ‘dynamic’ (Weintraub, free-floating ethereal objects, which pass from one

148 E. R. Weintraub disembodied mind to another quite unmediated, providing an account of the developmental context though they are occasionally transformed by other in which those communities thought those thoughts. products of pure thought. The evidence of our The particular techniques and tools and habits of professional lives provides a reality quite different. mind of economists do not appear full grown from Real people (like you and me) have beliefs and those the head of Zeus: rather they emerge imperfectly beliefs are what we take to be ideas and these ideas from the educational practices which inculcate cer- are transformed and reconfigured and reinterpreted tain habits of mind and techniques of craft. in cascades of representation and re-representation in intentional (and sometimes unintentional) dis- From such a perspective, our history book would course communities. But what do we know about contain chapters like: that community of economists who somehow are responsible for having, and transforming, economic • Economists Become Scientists ideas? As infants are not born speaking a language • Changing Fashions of Graduate Education in of supply shocks and heteroskedasticity, we may be Economics fairly confident that the process by which individuals • The Rhetoric of Twentieth Century Economics become economists conditions and shapes the prac- • Economics and Journalism: Mutual Misconcep- tices, including the speech practices, of those who tions identify themselves as economists.

How then can we talk about economic ideas without IX. REFLEXIVITY AND ECONOMIC having an understanding of how economists are HISTORY trained in the twentieth century? For many econo- mists, and for some historians of economics, these Economists appear to believe that there is a tangible questions smack of personalia. , for object of study called ‘the economy’, and that facts example, bemoaned the idea that biographical stud- and evidence and data derived from that economic ies of economists had any place in the history of reality can be used by economists to construct economics, arguing that Marshall’s laundry lists are theories, while those theories themselves can be not data for the historian of economics. Stigler was confronted by the data. Economists appear to be- wrong. The contingencies of time, and place, and lieve that ‘it’ out there is the economy, in here (our experience are not independent of the ideas which heads? our offices?) are our theories, and we are expressed in time, in place, and in experience. confront it with our theories and it tells us whether Economic beliefs are held by people, and beliefs are our theories are good or bad: the ideas that econo- shaped by personal and social experience. Bio- mists have are about something called the economy graphical studies, and sociological studies, of the and it exists independently of the ideas about it. This education of economists are too infrequently done. bifurcation leads to separate histories of the economy, The differential nature of national economics edu- and ideas about the economy, which are manifest in cation and training is relevant to the ideas of econo- the separate sub-disciplines called respectively Eco- mists writing in different languages in different nomic History, and the History of Economic Thought. countries (Coats, 1993, 1996). The presence of This split leads to an argument about internalist Ph.D. training in the United States, and its general versus externalist ‘explanations’ in the History of absence in the United Kingdom before the 1970s, is Economic Thought, an argument which pits those relevant to contextualizing the kind of work that the who believe that economists’ ideas beget econo- UK economists themselves did. How economists mists’ ideas which beget economists’ ideas, against were socialized to be economists in France, and those who believe that the changes in the economy Italy, and Sweden, and Australia, and Japan is help explain changes in economists’ ideas about the dependent on the kinds of ideas that those econo- economy. mists found congenial, and the kind of work that they would do later as professional economists. A sym- Nevertheless, it is not well appreciated by econo- pathetic and systematic understanding of twentieth mists that the distinction between scientific knowl- century economic thought must account for varia- edge of the natural world, and the natural world tions in those thoughts at least in some measure by itself, has been abandoned by many thoughtful

149 OXFORD REVIEW OF ECONOMIC POLICY, VOL. 15, NO. 4 historians of science as more troublesome than • Economists, Regulation, and the Rise of Big useful in providing historically useful accounts Business of the practices of science. It is this bifurcation of • Macroeconomics and the the real economy and theories about the economy • Monetarism, Central Banking, and Inflation which has been problematized by some competent Theory historians of economics at century’s end, as it has • Post-Second-World-War Reconstruction, and proved to be more of a hindrance than a help in Economic Development producing interesting histories of economics. Histo- • Late Twentieth Century Prosperity and the New rians of economics can provide far richer accounts Laissez-Faire of practice, more complex and engaging recon- structions of the stabilization of economic belief into economic knowledge, by interpreting the economy X. CONCLUSION itself as a set of descriptions, which descriptions themselves are provided not found. I am not claim- The editors have asked contributors to this issue to ing this distinction is unhelpful to economists of examine, for their respective topics, what has course, just that it is unhelpful in historically recon- changed over the century, why has it changed, what structing the activities of economists.9 is the significance of the changes, and what are the possible implications for the future. With respect to Just as there was no unemployment before the late the topic ‘Economic Thought’, the ostensible sub- nineteenth century, in the sense that there was no ject of this article, these questions are not easily idea of unemployment (as opposed to poverty, or answered. Economic thought is not a particular charity cases, or beggars; see Keyssar, 1986), so doctrine or set of several doctrines. As a conse- too the idea that we have an economy consisting of quence ‘it’ cannot be said to have changed in other interrelated markets is a description imposed by a than the immediate sense that all conversations framework of thought upon experiences. The idea about beliefs move along certain paths over time, that economists have about a pre-existing economy, reflecting the local and contingent circumstances of and economist-produced descriptions and theories, the discourse community in which the beliefs are is not wrong, just pragmatically unhelpful to the expressed. historian in reconstructing economic practice. This is not a chicken-and-egg argument about whether Our alternative course in this article was to suggest the economy does or does not exist except as a how the stories historians of economics might tell discursive practice, or about whether immaterial are themselves structured by changing ways of ideas must be confirmed or rejected by real facts of characterizing economics as a science. We saw a material economic life. It is rather that the ideas that some of the most interesting histories that we and theories, and the facts which are supposed to be can tell focus on the beliefs held by economists, the the reference of these ideas and theories, are best nature of the stabilization of those beliefs into knowl- understood by the historian as all mixed together. edge claims, the evolution of the change in beliefs, The ideas in modern labour economics—human the mechanisms by which such changes occurred, capital, earnings profiles, discrimination, etc.—sta- and the connections of those beliefs with other bilize and are stabilized by the facts. The economy constellations of beliefs which themselves changed. constructs our ideas and is constructed by our ideas. As historians of economics understand and interpret The process is one of mutual stabilization without economics-language in this way, in this self-con- priority to either human or material agency. sciously reflexive way, their work provides an in- teresting integration of , eco- From such a perspective, a history of economics in nomic policy, economic theory, the rhetoric of the twentieth century would necessarily have chap- economics, and the history and philosophy of ters like: economic thought.

9 Nor am I claiming that reality (whatever that means) does, or does not, exist (whatever that means). Such propositions are intellectually hopeless.

150 E. R. Weintraub

The book called The History of Economics in the social science, taking its place among established Twentieth Century has not yet been written. I have scientific disciplines, even with its own Nobel Prize. argued that, when it is, it may bear little resemblance We have seen economists greatly respected in to Schumpeter’s magnum opus suitably updated, public discourse, offering advice which is seriously nor is it likely to resemble the older textbooks with given, and taken. We have seen economists trained chapters on Physiocratic Thought, , as professionals, and educated in a worldwide - , etc. As each generation writes histo- work of ideas and understandings. New techniques, ries consistent with narratives of what our econom- new ideas, and new approaches to being an econo- ics discipline is ‘supposed’ to be doing, the histories mist have energized the field of study, and practice themselves will shift in their perspectives. Certainly, of economics. The best way to write the history, the twentieth century differs from the nineteenth, then, must recognize both the diversity of perspec- and so just as certainly our economics differs from tive and complex richness of this human practice its economics. We have seen economics become a called ‘doing economics’.

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