Conclusion
Finally, it is worth re-emphasising that, for Thomas Balogh, economics was not, and could never be, a science. No matter how much the power of the econometric microscope might be turned up, it could never discover the laws of human behaviour, because for him there were no such laws.
Interesting regularities there might be, constraints there certainly were, but each of these was a product of the habits, history and institutions of the country concerned. Such factors had to be taken into account both because they varied from case to case and because they might change. Economic science was therefore no more than pseudoscience. Political economy was the only proper subject.If today's heterodox economists wish to take away one thing from Baloghian economics, it is this: What matters above all else is context. Mainstream economists study economis⅛y—which can take as much mathematics as you care to throw at it. Political economists study economic—and here the maths has to take second place to the complexity of reality.
It is worth recalling at this point Keynes's remark in his obituary of Marshall:
[T]he amalgam of logic and intuition and the wide knowledge of facts, most of which are not precise, which is required for economic interpretation in its highest form, is, quite truly, overwhelmingly difficult for those whose gift mainly consists in the power to imagine and pursue to their furthest points the implications and prior conditions of comparatively simple facts which are known with a high degree of precision (Keynes 1924: 333, fn. 2).
At a commemoration for Balogh held in the Palace of Westminster in 1985, with three former Prime Ministers in attendance (Wilson, Callaghan and Heath), Lord (Harold) Lever paid tribute to his role above all as ‘a devoted public servant' (Lever 1985). Balogh, the scourge of the establishment, would have regarded this as highly ironic, Yet, if we add to this the power of his insights and the flamboyancy (his enemies would say the impossibility) of his character, the verdict is not unfair.
Certainly, Balogh's energies on behalf of his adopted country truly deserve that recognition. But, he was more than a devoted public servant, far more. His multiple contributions make him a political economist extraordinaire. To be blessed with Balogh's intuition is given to very few. To have that intuition, combined with what Streeten (1985a: 19) has called his ‘Zivilcourage' (the capacity to speak one's mind when all around are of an opposite opinion), is a gift which should not pass unnoticed in the history of political economy.