The development of economics as a science which is always based on human beings, the creative actors and protagonists in all social processes and events (the subjectivist conception), is undoubtedly the most significant and characteristic contribution made by the Austrian School of economics, founded by Carl Menger. In fact Menger felt it vital to abandon the sterile objectivism of the classical (Anglo-Saxon) school whose members were obsessed with the supposed existence of external objective entities (social classes, aggregates, material factors of production, etc.). Menger held that economists should instead always adopt the subjectivist view of human beings who act, and that this perspective should invariably exert a decisive influence on the way all economic theories are formulated, in terms of their scientific content and their practical conclusions and results.
Jesús Huerta de SotoRelated topics
act anglo-saxon austrian carl characteristic classical conception content creative development economics felt hold human objective production school science should significant view vital way etcRelated quotes
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. There was a widespread myth of the 1970s, a myth along Tom Kuhn's (1962) Structure of Scientific Revolutions lines. The Keynesianism, which worked so well in Camelot and brought forth a long epoch of price-level stability with good Q growth and nearly full employment, gave way to a new and quite different macro view after 1966. A new paradigm, monistic monetarism, so the tale narrates, gave a better fit. And therefore King Keynes lost self esteem and public esteem. The King is dead. Long live King Milton!
Contemplate the true facts. Examine 10 prominent best forecasting models 1950 to 1980: Wharton, Townsend–Greenspan, Michigan Model, St. Louis Reserve Bank, Citibank Economic Department under Walter Wriston's choice of Lief Olson, et cetera. ... M did matter as for almost everyone. But never did M alone matter systemically, as post-1950 Friedman monetarism professed.
Paul Samuelson
The third and intermediate kind of instruction, which connects the first two... relates to the application of scientific principles to practical purposes. It qualifies the student to plan a structure or a machine for a given purpose, without the necessity of copying some existing example, and to adapt his designs to situations to which no existing example affords a parallel. It enables him to compute the theoretical limit of the strength or stability of a structure, or the efficiency of a machine of a particular kind-to ascertain how far an actual structure or machine fails to attain that limit-to discover the cause of such shortcomings-and to devise improvements for obviating such causes; and it enables him to judge how far an established practical rule is founded on reason, how far on mere custom, and how far on error.
William John Macquorn Rankine
Unless we address those problems from the point of view of a world where development is genuinely sustainable, where protection of the environment is vital, where the earth's wealth is redistributed in favour of the poorest people in the poorest countries, in the next few years we shall face a growing imbalance between north and south. Ever-increasing numbers of people will flee from environmental destruction-from rain forest destruction, increased desertification and the increased flooding linked to that. Millions of people will have to flee from the places where they grew up and live and there will be growing imbalances in the world, and growing poverty. There has to be a change in the relationship. That means that higher prices must be paid for commodities. It means that there must be an increased aid programme, and an understanding that we are all in this together.
Jeremy Corbyn
Development means a capacity for self-sustaining growth. It means that an economy must register advances which in turn will promote further progress. The loss of industry and skill in Africa was extremely small, if we measure it from the viewpoint of modern scientific achievements or even by standards of England in the late eighteenth century. However, it must be borne in mind that to be held back at one stage means that it is impossible to go on to a further stage. When a person was forced to leave school after only two years of primary school education, it is no reflection on him that he is academically and intellectually less developed than someone who had the opportunity to be schooled right through to university level. What Africa experienced in the early centuries of trade was precisely a loss of development opportunity, and this is of the greatest importance.
Walter Rodney
The whole economic system of Capitalism is an offshoot of a devouring and overwhelming lust, of a kind that can hold sway only in a society that has deliberately renounced the Christian asceticism and turned away from Heaven to give itself over exclusively to earthly gratifications. ... It is the result of a secularization of economic life, and by it the hierarchical subordination of the material to the spiritual is inverted. The autonomy of economics has ended in their dominating the whole life of human societies: the worship of Mammon has become the determining force of the age. And the worst of it is that this undisguised "mammonism” is regarded as a very good thing, an attainment to the knowledge of truth and a release from illusions. Economic materialism formulates this to perfection when it brands the whole spiritual life of man as a deception and a dream.
Nikolai Berdyaev