The fall of the economists’ empire

The West still views itself as the bearer of universal civilisation, with the non-West no more than a lagging cultural indicator. But, ironically, the triumph of Western universalism has come just when Western power is collapsing. The historian Norman Stone, who died in June 2019, always insisted that history students learn foreign languages. Language gives access to a people’s culture, and culture to its history. Its history tells us how it sees itself and others. Knowledge of languages should thus be an essential component of a historian’s technical equipment. It is the key to understanding the past and future of international relations. But this belief in the fundamental importance of knowing particular languages has faded, even among historians. All social sciences, to a greater or lesser degree, start with a yearning for a universal language, into which they can fit such particulars as suit their view of things. Their model of knowledge thus aspires to the precision and generality of the natural sciences. Once we understand human behaviour in terms of some universal and – crucially – ahistorical principle, we can aspire to control (and of course improve) it. No social science has succumbed to this temptation more than economics. Its favoured universal language is mathematics. Its models of human behaviour are built not on close observation, but on hypotheses that, if not quite plucked from the air, are unconsciously plucked from economists’ intellectual and political environments. These then form the premises of logical reasoning of the type, “All sheep are white, therefore the next sheep I meet will be white.” In economics: “All humans are rational utility maximisers. Therefore, in any situation, they will act in such a way as to maximise their utility.” This method gives economics a unique predictive power, especially as the utilities can all […]

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