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The Smith-Hayek Economist: From Character to Identityby Daniel B. Klein*March 5, 2007 |
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Political economists are in general quite suspicious of
governmental intervention. They see in it inconveniences of all kinds—a
diminution of individual liberty, energy, prudence, and experience,
which constitute the most precious resources of any society. Hence, it
often happens that they oppose this intervention. |
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Nowadays, when you hear that someone is an "economist," the only thing you feel sure of is that he or she has a post-graduate degree in "Economics" or a job with the job title "economist." Although economists still share some basic ideas and formulations, they often differ in important respects, including the sensibilities that motivate their work, presumptions about what is good for society, and associated policy judgments. |
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Perhaps ten percent of economists in the United States share the broad character represented by Smith, Say, and Bastiat. Would it make sense for them to distinguish their character in some way? Would it make sense for them to cultivate a suitable identity? In this essay, I explore the heterogeneity of character types in economics, delineate the "Smith-Hayek" character, and explain why it might be beneficial for that character to establish an identity that functions in both the professional and public cultures.
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People seem to have a need to define and judge themselves as beings that transcend the bestial, and that goes for economists, too. Economists have purposes qua economist, purposes related to serving goals, causes, values, and ideas. If asked, most economists would probably say they are serving society by serving science. To serve science, they follow the customs, standards, and practices of academic economics. In the sociology of science, the established, dominant standards and practices of a scholastic community are sometimes called "normal science." Doing "normal science" is keeping your nose to the scientific grindstone. Perhaps the dominant characteristic of the normal economist is a tendency to look to the profession—its "top" journals, its "top" departments—to determine what kinds of activities and purposes are meritorious. The "normal" character in economics feels considerable loyalty to the top of the economics pyramid. |
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The practical morals of "normal" practices become adopted and internalized without much critical scrutiny. Thinking of their purpose as merely "scientific," uncritical economists are in fact assuming and adopting the particular substantive judgments implicit in normal practices.1 Within the economist profession, there are officially recognized sub-types, broken down by style of research and by "field" or topic area. Common among many of those sub-types is the image of economists as social engineers, who can identify problems with the laissez-faire economy and then solve them. The inculcation of this character type is reflected, for example, in conventional vocabulary of "market failure," meaning the inability of laissez-faire to achieve an abstract and formal notion of perfection. The "failure" terminology would not be so objectionable if the logic were applied symmetrically, so as to define "government failure" as the inability of the government to achieve that same perfection. (In that case, we could all agree with the pointless inference that all institutions fail.) But a little experience with normal economics shows that "market failure" is a fundamental analytic category in economics, whereas "government failure" is scarcely used, and when used is more frequently used in a sense meaning failure to achieve its goals or failure relative to other (imperfect) institutional arrangements. Built into the normal science, then, is a double-standard that is prejudicial against free markets. Other aspects of "normal" economics are prejudicial against free markets. Model building, for example, the exalted mode of discourse, tends to eclipse some of the important virtues of free markets. I would even say that model building tends to render the very idea of freedom nugatory—that is, the idea of freedom is vital because life is not like an equilibrium model. Most economists see themselves as character-free. But once normal economics is subjected to criticism and scrutiny, we find norms. We see that there is no "character-free" economist, and that the idea of being without character is nonsensical. The discipline is populated by economists of different character types.
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Those of "like mind" or "kindred spirit" share our purposes. With them we have fraternal feeling. They are kin in character. It helps to be able to identify kin. For example, in pre-Civil War America, proponents of the immediate emancipation of all slaves identified themselves as "abolitionist." Not all abolitionists agreed on every aspect of the struggle. But the overarching identity of "abolitionist" facilitated discovery, mobilization, and cooperation. And indeed it cut both ways, as their opponents, too, called them abolitionists, and sometimes used violence against them. "Abolitionist" was an identity, as in what one shows when asked for "ID." Someone's name is a label, but it is also an identity functioning in society. An identity is not merely a label you feel comfortable with. As the dictionary says, it an aspect by which the characteristics are definitively recognizable or known. It is a name that functions openly, no matter the context. |
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Moreover, "economist" simpliciter denies one of the primary purposes of the Smith-Hayek economist: making it clear that economist characters are multiple and conflicting. Perhaps in the days of Smith or Bastiat "political economist" worked, but those days are long gone. Smith-Hayek needs to go from character to identity. That would depend critically on admitting, establishing and publicizing the heterogeneity of characters within economics. Only if heterogeneity is recognized does it become possible to achieve widespread recognition of a Smith-Hayek character. As an established identity, the competition between it and alternative identities would be more meaningful and productive. Hayek's insights about competition as a discovery procedure also apply to culture.
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For comments related to this article, see Teaching
Un-Normal Economics, by Arnold Kling on EconLog.
For more articles by
Daniel Klein, see the Archive.
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