The Political Economists’ Question Many political philosophers do not think that political economy provides its own version of political philosophy’s fundamental question. After all, political economy is purely descriptive; how could political economists have anything to say about how institutions should work? To understand why this attitude is confused, remember that the great political economists were political philosophers. In my view, the great political economists (Hume, Smith, Mill, Hayek and Buchanan, among others) were trying to answer much the same question as the social contract theorists. This is not clear at first, as political economy is so often identified with the utilitarian tradition. Their question: “What is best for humans?” Their answer: institutions that maximize welfare. But let’s go deeper for a moment. After all, what did the great political economists spend most of their time doing? Describing the conditions under which ordinary, largely equal human beings actually learned to cooperate despite their disagreements. Hume and Smith were economists and historians as well as moral philosophers. They developed complex theories of how human beings learned to live together despite their differing interests, tastes and judgments. John Stuart Mill wrote The Principles of Political Economy, one of the greatest works of political economy in the 19th century. Hayek and Buchanan were political philosophers whose greatest achievements were advancing our understanding of how diverse individuals cooperate in an extended social order. The great political economists were in this way preoccupied with much the same problem as the social contract theorists. It is true that the two sides have not gotten along. The great political economists have usually been roundly skeptical of the social contract as a ground for the social order, and the great social contract theorists have often not recognized that the great political economists were addressing their question because they believed the political economist’s project was descriptive rather than prescriptive. Yet we mustn’t draw this contrast too sharply. Obviously Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant and Rawls were deeply interested in how real institutions function. None of them believed you could determine which institutions were just without institutional analysis. All relied on political science, history and economics in their own way. And I think one can make a strong argument that in the end Hume and Smith were contractarians of an evolutionary sort (Smith’s impartial spectator can be interpreted as a contractor). Buchanan explicitly embraces the contractarian label. So I see the great political philosophers and political economists as involved in a loosely united endeavor: to explain the authority of the restraints of political life in a world of free and equal persons who deeply disagree with one another about what is true, right and just. bleedingheartlibertarians/2012/02/political-philosophys-fundamental-question/
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 11:00:00 +0000
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