Subjectivism and Economic Analysis: Essays in memory of Ludwig ...

LÁSLÓ CSONTOSpoint which is decisive for the peculiar quality of the questionsproper to our discipline: In economic theory (‘value theory’) westand entirely on our own feet.(Weber 1908:31)7 ‘Marginal utility theory and, more broadly, any subjective theory ofvalue are not psychologically, but—if a methodological term isdesired—“pragmatically” founded, that is, on the use of the categories“ends” and “mans”’ (Weber 1908:33).8 On what follows see also Langlois and Csontos (1993).9 According to Lachmann:Some readers may feel that in doubting whether there is muchscope in economics for empirical generalisations of acomprehensive character, applying equally to future and past,we have gone too far. They may remind us that in the Austriantradition all economic action is embedded in a network of meansand ends.…Mises even attributed a priori character to thenetwork of means and ends, and Hayek in 1937 spoke of thispart of economics as the ‘pure logic of choice’. It is indeedevident that all human activity is purposeful. Why should such abody of thought have to be regarded as incapable of providing asolid basis for empirical generalisations of the kind mentioned?The answer has to be that our network of means and ends,precisely by virtue of the logical necessity inherent in it, isimpotent to engender empirical generalisations. Its truth ispurely abstract and formal truth. The means and ends itconnects are abstract entities. In the real world the concretemeans used and ends sought are ever changing as knowledgechanges and what seemed worthwhile yesterday no longer seemsso today. We appeal in vain to the logic of means and ends toprovide us with support for empirical generalisations of the kindmentioned.(Lachmann 1971:3D10 According to Weber:Now the tenets which constitute specifically economic theory donot represent,…‘the whole’ of our science. These tenets affordbut a single means (often, to be sure, an underestimated means)for the analysis of the causal connections of empirical reality. Assoon as we take hold of this reality itself, in its culturallysignificant components, and seek to explain it causally,economic history is immediately revealed as a sum of ‘idealtypical’concepts. This means that its theorems represent a seriesof conceptually constructed events, which, in ‘ideal purity’, areseldom, or even not at all, to be found in the historical reality ofany particular time.(Weber 1908:33–4)100