9058009849

CHAPTER I

2

86230

2 • Th e _s ubtle_ b i ą so f _ ' s c i e nti fię^rą tlona 1 it y

Not only are most of these actlons 'value loaded¹, those who have inspired then were *value blased¹, such as Wicksell, Myrdal and the Swedish refoners of the early part of this century; as the Webbs, and Beveridge; as Roosevelt and the New Deal; as, though in a lesser degree, Keynes hlmself. This is why these fundamental steps in the history of our civilization were never truły regarded, within the .scientific debate, as a real progress in the degree of rationałity of our societies, despite the fact that for a long while aost of the scientists were strongly influenced, if not even fascinated, by then.

But yalues are values and they are not regarded, by the highbrow neo-positivist tradltion which prevails in social Sciences, as being susceptible of evaluation fro* the viewpoint of rationałity. So, for exanple,. the value of solidarity can be liked or disliked, accepted or refused, but could not be considered as being aore rationał than that of aggressiveness and coapetitiveness.

It is to be noticed that such an epistenological attitude is historicałły new: cłassicał econoaists -such as Smith and Ricardo- who considered the political econoay. as a part of their philosophical research, investigated the 'laws* of the econoay in order to strengthen, with the help of rationał inves t igation, their nomative and ethicał approach to better ways of ruling modern societies; and this tradltion continued in economics until Pigou, that is, until the first quarter of this century, and then faded away, under the influence of apparently morę 'pure' scientists, such as Pareto, Robbins and Hicks. It is to be noticed also that, paradoxicalły enough, such an epistemołoglcał attitude, while still dominating within the econoaic science, is now regarded as only instrumental1y useful, but substanti a 11y obsolete, by most up-to-date philosophy of knowledge.

³ • The__nę£.d_ f or_ an ups u r ge o f A n t elll_ g e n t s o lid a r i t y.. . ^

There is a reason, a reason that we conslder as most important for our Report, for devoting sonę attention to apparently peripheral issues in the history of econoaic and social thought. Present policles are in fact strongly influenced by econoaic disciplines, and particularly by those branches of economics which mostly departed froa the classical and Pigouvian tradltion. In their efforts to rule out value judgments, and to found a pure econoaic science, modern economics ended up in stylizing econoaic facts as determined only by    the interaction of purely selfish individual

motivations. Glven this, no space exists, in the reconstructi on of the world which is madę by pure econoaists, for forces different from those which are motlvated and put into motlon by the selflshness of uti 1 i ty-»axia>izing individuals; that is, for forces which stem out of ethical and ideologlcal motivations, from emotions and affective instincts, from worał inte11igence, from the sense of