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• Human Action: a Treatise On Economics: Vol. 3. Part 5: Social Cooperation Without a Market
• Chapter 25: The Imaginary Construction of a Socialist Society
• 1: The Historical Origin of the Socialist Idea
• 2: The Socialist Doctrine
• 3: The Praxeological Character of Socialism
• Chapter 26: The Impossibility of Economic Calculation Under Socialism
• 1: The Problem
• 2: Past Failures to Conceive the Problem
• 3: Recent Suggestions For Socialist Economic Calculation
• 4: Trial and Error
• 5: The Quasi-market
• 6: The Differential Equations of Mathematical Economics
• Part 6: The Hampered Market Economy
• Chapter 27: The Government and the Market
• 1: The Idea of a Third System
• 2: The Intervention
• 3: The Delimitation of Governmental Functions
• 4: Righteousness As the Ultimate Standard of the Individual’s Actions
• 5: The Meaning of Laissez Faire
• 6: Direct Government Interference With Consumption
• Corruption
• Chapter 28: Interference By Taxation
• 1: The Neutral Tax
• 2: The Total Tax
• 3: Fiscal and Nonfiscal Objectives of Taxation
• 4: The Three Classes of Tax Interventionism
• Chapter 29: Restriction of Production
• 1: The Nature of Restriction
• 2: The Price of Restriction
• 3: Restriction As a Privilege
• 4: Restriction As an Economic System
• Chapter 30: Interference With the Structure of Prices
• 1: The Government and the Autonomy of the Market
• 2: The Market’s Reaction to Government Interference
• Observations On the Causes of the Decline of Ancient Civilization
• 3: Minimum Wage Rates
• The Catallactic Aspects of Labor Unionism
• Chapter 31: Currency and Credit Manipulation
• 1: The Government and the Currency
• 2: The Interventionist Aspect of Legal Tender Legislation
• 3: The Evolution of Modern Methods of Currency Manipulation
• 4: The Objectives of Currency Devaluation
• 5: Credit Expansion
• The Chimera of Contracyclical Policies
• 6: Foreign Exchange Control and Bilateral Exchange Agreements
• Chapter 32: Confiscation and Redistribution
• 1: The Philosophy of Confiscation
• 2: Land Reform
• 3: Confiscatory Taxation
• Confiscatory Taxation and Risk-taking
• Chapter 33: Syndicalism and Corporativism
• 1: The Syndicalist Idea
• 2: The Fallacies of Syndicalism
• 3: Syndicalist Elements In Popular Policies
• 4: Guild Socialism and Corporativism
• Chapter 34: The Economics of War
• 1: Total War
• 2: War and the Market Economy
• 3: War and Autarky
• 4.: The Futility of War
• Chapter 35: The Welfare Principle Versus the Market Principle
• 1: The Case Against the Market Economy
• 2: Poverty
• 3: Inequality
• 4: Insecurity
• 5: Social Justice
• Chapter 36: The Crisis of Interventionism
• 1: The Harvest of Interventionism
• 2: The Exhaustion of the Reserve Fund
• 3: The End of Interventionism
• Part 7: The Place of Economics In Society
• Chapter 37: The Nondescript Character of Economics
• 1: The Singularity of Economics
• 2: Economics and Public Opinion
• 3: The Illusion of the Old Liberals
• Chapter 38: The Place of Economics In Learning
• 1: The Study of Economics
• 2: Economics As a Profession
• 3: Forecasting As a Profession
• 4: Economics and the Universities
• 5: General Education and Economics
• 6: Economics and the Citizen
• 7: Economics and Freedom
• Chapter 39: Economics and the Essential Problems of Human Existence
• 1: Science and Life
• 2: Economics and Judgments of Value
• 3: Economic Cognition and Human Action

2

Economics and Judgments of Value

While many people blame economics for its neutrality with regard to value judgments, other people blame it for its alleged indulgence in them. Some contend that economics must necessarily express judgments of value and is therefore not really scientific, as the criterion of science is its valuational indifference. Others maintain that good economics should be and could be impartial, and that only bad economists sin against this postulate.

The semantic confusion in the discussion of the problems concerned is due to an inaccurate use of terms on the part of many economists. An economist investigates whether a measure a can bring about the result p for the attainment of which it is recommended, and finds that a does not result in p but in g, an effect which even the supporters of the measure a consider undesirable. If this economist states the outcome of his investigation by saying that a is a bad measure, he does not pronounce a judgment of value. He merely says that from the point of view of those aiming at the goal p, the measure a is inappropriate. In this sense the free-trade economists attacked protection. They demonstrated that protection does not, as its champions believe, increase but, on the contrary, decreases the total amount of products, and is therefore bad from the point of view of those who prefer an ampler supply of products to a smaller. It is in this sense that economists criticize policies from the point of view of the ends aimed at. If an economist calls minimum wage rates a bad policy, what he means is that its effects are contrary to the purpose of those who recommend their application.

From the same point of view praxeology and economics look upon the fundamental principle of human existence and social evolution, viz., that cooperation under the social division of labor is a more efficient way of acting than is the autarkic isolation of individuals. Praxeology and economics do not say that men should peacefully cooperate within the frame of societal bonds; they merely say that men must act this way if they want to make their actions more successful than otherwise. Compliance with the moral rules which the establishment, preservation, and intensification of social cooperation require is not seen as a sacrifice to a mythical entity, but as the recourse to the most efficient methods of action, as a price expended for the attainment of more highly valued returns.

It is against this substitution of an autonomous, rationalistic and voluntaristic ethics for the heteronomous doctrines both of intuitionism and of revealed commandments that the united forces of all antiliberal schools and dogmatisms direct the most furious attacks. They all blame the utilitarian philosophy for the pitiless austerity of its description and analysis of human nature and of the ultimate springs of human action. It is not necessary to add anything more to the refutation of these criticisms which every page of this book provides. Only one point should be mentioned again, because on the one hand it is the acme of the doctrine of all contemporary pied pipers and on the other hand it offers to the average intellectual a welcome excuse to shun the painstaking discipline of economic studies.

Economics, it is said, in its rationalistic prepossessions assumes that men aim only or first of all at material well-being. But in reality men prefer irrational objectives to rational ones. They are guided more by the urge to realize myths and ideals than by the urge to enjoy a higher standard of living.

What economics has to answer is this:

• 1. Economics does not assume or postulate that men aim only or first of all at what is called material well-being. Economics, as a branch of the more general theory of human action, deals with all human action, i.e., with man’s purposive aiming at the attainment of ends chosen, whatever these ends may be. To apply the concept rational or irrational to the ultimate ends chosen is nonsensical. We may call irrational the ultimate given, viz., those things that our thinking can neither analyze nor reduce to other ultimately given things. Then every ultimate end chosen by any man is irrational. It is neither more nor less rational to aim at riches like Croesus than to aim at poverty like a Buddhist monk.
• 2. What these critics have in mind when employing the term rational ends is the desire for material well-being and a higher standard of living. It is a question of fact whether or not their statement is true that men in general and our contemporaries especially are driven more by the wish to realize myths and dreams than by the wish to improve their material well-being. Although no intelligent being could fail to give the correct answer, we may disregard the issue. For economics does not say anything either in favor of or against myths. It is perfectly neutral with regard to the labor-union doctrine, the credit-expansion doctrine and all such doctrines as far as these may present themselves as myths and are supported as myths by their partisans. It deals with these doctrines only as far as they are considered doctrines about the means fit for the attainment of definite ends. Economics does not say labor unionism is a bad myth. It merely says it is an inappropriate means of raising wage rates for all those eager to earn wages. It leaves it to every man to decide whether the realization of the labor-union myth is more important than the avoidance of the inevitable consequences of laborunion policies.

In this sense we may say that economics is apolitical or nonpolitical, although it is the foundation of politics and of every kind of political action. We may furthermore say that it is perfectly neutral with regard to all judgments of value, as it refers always to means and never to the choice of ultimate ends.