Theoretical retrospect
According to the perspective of rational reconstructions, it is the objective contents of economics - that is, the structured group of concepts and relations between concepts that guarantee the cognitive capturing of the real world - that functions as the axis of historical retrospection.
Taken individually, but without any concern for inserting them in their historical context other than that of establishing the dates between which they lived or the period when they wrote their works, the authors or schools are considered within the perspective of the contributions that they have successively made, whether to the development of instruments and techniques of analysis, or to the construction and improvement of a conceptual corpus that we wish to see increasingly refined, and preferably devoid of any ideological connotations. By following this type of procedure, it becomes possible not only to dissect the analytical scope of theoretical models created by past authors, but also to trace the evolution of particular concepts and, by extension, to chronicle the development of economics as a whole.In such an avenue of research, there is always room for contradictions, changes, revolutions, which have in fact been thoroughly dissected through the application of the epistemological digressions of Popper, Kuhn or Lakatos to the concrete field of the history of economics (see Latsis 1976; Hausman 1984; De Marchi 1988). However, no matter how significant are the vicissitudes or conflicts that cause us to doubt the validity of scientific principles that are generally considered to be unquestionable, there always remains an axis around which the chronology of the successive advances recorded in the same field of research can be made to gravitate. This means that, if nowadays economics enjoys an undeniable citizenship, this is due to the trials and tribulations to which it has been subjected in the past.
The result is clearly visible, and anyone who doubts this should simply consult any elementary university textbook in economics at random.The great merit of this way of understanding and writing the history - or rather a retrospective - of economics lies precisely in the possibility that it provides for better understanding the interpretive models that we currently have available. It allows us to strengthen the capabilities of a science that, in order to achieve the level of suitability and performance that it is acknowledged to have, has had to experiment and to approximate, proceeding by trial and error, making successive conceptual elaborations, conjectures and refutations. It allows us to understand, for example, that the theorisation of the great economic aggregates and their relationships of functional dependence, or that the interpretation of the mechanisms of price formation in different types of markets, were successively tested before we reached our current point of arrival. In short, it serves a process of legitimisation of the present state of the science with the irrefutable arguments of the path that it has travelled and with the reflections made about the “mistakes” that have meanwhile been ironed out (see Blaug 1962; Pribram 1983; Negishi 1989; Niehans 1990; Dome 1994, to mention only texts whose subject-matter is the history of economic thought as a whole and not that of a particular period, theme or author). This historiographical genre seems appropriate to guarantee a fruitful dialogue between historians and economists, based on the premise that, in both groups, there are people interested in engaging in such dialogue, which unfortunately is not always the case.
However, we know how difficult this path has been, how many divergences there have been, how many contradictory analytical explanations have been constructed around the same research object. It would be as senseless as it is ingenuous to seek to give economics an image of irrepressible homogeneity.
If we accept controversy as a sign of vitality - that is, if we consider that the fact of economists having access to distinct codes for the interpretation of reality does not represent an obstacle to the validation of their discourse nor establish the Manichean dichotomy of truth and falsehood - the exercise of performing rational reconstructions becomes equally essential, in so far as it allows us to detect the origins of the disagreements and the reasons for their continuing endurance. There is no one single theory of money, just as there is no one single theory of production, distribution, well-being or equilibrium. There are, instead, different theoretical approaches, of greater or lesser convergence, that embody a scientific whole in which the right to differ does not prevent the establishment of basic principles (see Creedy and O’Brien 1984).We may disagree with one or another of the postulates, but the arguments with which we attempt to refute them will be thrown back at us with the same level of commitment. For this reason, going back into the past of economic theory enables us to acquire an attitude of tolerance and humility towards a common inheritance that can withstand the emotion of its being divided up and shared out. This allows us to see that, among the self-confessed or implicit supporters of this way of understanding the virtues of rational reconstructions, we can find authors who openly declare themselves to be opposed to the mainstream theoretical thought and who do, in fact, use their study of the history of economic thought as an instrument for asserting the vitality and relevance of their heterodox and alternative conceptions.
The virtues of this retrospective procedure do not, however, prevent us from pointing out some limitations that arise both from the fact that only the interior dimension of the science is being considered, and, above all, from the concrete way in which this exercise is carried out. The first of these limitations is perfectly clear to the authors who devote themselves to the history of economic theory or analysis.
In fact, they cannot be accused of understanding history more as an instrument than as an object of study, since they expressly and purposefully ensure that their motivations are devoid of any reflection that is exterior to the theoretical production in itself. The application of the concept of Whig history is, in this sense, perfectly appropriate (Samuelson 1987).However, this openly a-historical point of view has inevitable repercussions when put to the concrete test of making rational reconstructions. The references to the past of economic theory are instrumentalised in accordance with a present state that one seeks to legitimise, thus resulting in two biases that even the most careful epistemological vigilance cannot avoid.
The first bias consists in the loyal devotion to theoretical currents in which authors place their absolute and exclusive trust, pouring scorn on the movements or schools that may oppose them. Given the multiplicity of themes that nowadays amount to study objects calling for the application of economics, given also the diversity of opinions that are issued about them, and given also the presence of value judgements that may determine the direction taken by such retrospection, the problem might be considered to be a simple phenomenon that is naturally inherent in the research undertaken in the realm of the social sciences. However, while the process of reconstructing the past from the present is not in question here, one cannot avoid pointing out the limitation that is involved in marginalising theoretical conceptions whose usefulness may be considered worthless.
The second bias derives from the type of language that is generally used to explain the contributions of the authors from the past. The instruments and techniques of analysis that we have available today are used for the purpose of modernising a language that is arrogantly considered to be out of date. Modern concepts, presented in the form of mathematical functions or diagrams, replace and subvert discourses in which the words were not expressed as algebraic symbols or in the form of graphs.
While this procedure clearly has the great advantage of standardising the codes that apparently enshrine the scientific character of economic theory and making them understandable, it just as clearly leads to an emptying of their content and a limiting simplification of the theoretical legacies of the authors from the past, who never suspected that they would find themselves stripped of the forms of argument that they used. The danger is not that Adam Smith’s theory of economic development is transformed into a mathematical model of endogenous growth; the danger is that we are thus led either to believe or infer that Adam Smith might have conceived such a model.The conjugation of these two biases shapes a retrospective view of economics that invites the authors and schools of the past to sit in the dock. History is transformed into a courtroom in which those who have contributed, anticipated and forecast are absolved and applauded, while those who did not rise to the genial heights of authors who have been vested with the title of precursors are condemned and have scorn heaped upon them. Authors or schools become valued, not for what they effectively said and upheld, but for the prophetic flashes or naive omissions that, when seen from a distance, their work suggests.
Besides the references that have already been made to authors who have left their own indelible mark on the methodology that is centred upon rational reconstructions, we must also mention one of the authors who most contributed to its legitimisation. I am referring here to the work of Joseph A. Schumpeter (1954), who expressly wished to be associated with a vision that emphasised the objective contents of the science and its evolution over different periods. However, his book strays away from the narrow perspective of his confessed aims, and the great mine of historical information that he uses, revealing his extraordinary encyclopaedic knowledge, also shows a preference for an approach that is decidedly closer to the methodology that we define as historical reconstruction. That is, Schumpeter ended up accomplishing a different aim to the one that he stated that he wished to pursue.