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

MISES AND LACHMANN ON HUMAN ACTIONAustrian economics. If human actions can only be understoodwithin a context, then any claim that certain truths concerninghuman action can be arrived at deductively is simply wrong.Further, if emphasis is now placed on the intersubjective contextwithin which any human action occurs, then the much vaunted‘subjectivism’ of Austrian economics would seem to becompromised. The Cartesian privileging of ‘the subject’ fits ratheruneasily, if at all, within intellectual traditions stressingintersubjectivity. 15 These are major issues that clearly warrant moredetailed examination. However, it is difficult to appreciate how‘Austrian economies’ can avoid confronting them. Unless thedifficulties in Mises’s project can be resolved in an alternativemanner, then, despite the possibility of defending a weak notion of‘the a priori’, Lachmann’s analysis would seem to form a viablestarting point for any Austrian discussion of human action.Notes1 As Ebeling observes ‘but Mises believed that Weber had remained toomuch the child of the German Historical School, with its theoreticalrelativism’ (Ebeling 1994:86).2 Lachmann himself does not explore how his theory differs fromrational choice theory.3 In a recent collection of essays devoted to Austrian economics (Boettkeand Prychitko 1994), several authors refer to ‘plans’. However, theredoes not appear to be any awareness that this emphasis raisesquestions for rational choice theories.4 Rickert was a leading Neo-Kantian philosopher. For a more detaileddiscussion of Mises’s relationship to Rickert, see Parsons (1990).5 Rickert’s reference to the irrationality of reality was meantphenomenologically: it referred to our experience of reality. As notedbelow, Mises tends to confuse phenomenological and epistemologicalquestions.6 According to Mises, historical concepts are type concepts, or ‘idealtypes’,which organise data into classes. As such, they are ‘inexact’ inthe sense that, as mental constructs, they simplify reality. To useMises’s own example, the type concept ‘entrepreneur’ refers to a classof individuals engaged in business who, in other regards, differgreatly. In contrast, in economics, the concept ‘entrepreneur’ refers toa ‘specific function, that is the provision for an uncertain future. Inthis respect everybody is an entrepreneur…it is not the task of thisclassification in economic theory to distinguish men, but todistinguish functions’ (Mises 1990:14). Again, as economics is notconcerned with individuality, it does not matter that all individualsare not only entrepreneurs, or that they perform this function indifferent ways.57