Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

296 Economics
Parsons and N. Smelser rightly pointed out that the ‘Keynesian revolution was
particularly welcome in many circles because the short-run focus of empirical
and practical interest made it possible to relegate to the background some of the
problems of long-run change prominent in the work of the classicists, of Mar-
shall and Schumpeter’.zo
If Keynes’ theory nevertheless remains an important link which could facili-
tate the reintegration of economics and sociology, it is because of some of the
methods he employs. He and his followers conspicuously use aggregate magni-
tudes, through which they can look at society and the national economy as a
whole. For, behind the basic economic magnitudes (e.g. gross wages bill, gross
savings, investment) social classes and social relations are hidden, although
some of Keynes’ concepts, e.g. the propensity to save, obscure these relations.
In so far, then, as the return to macro-economic analysis is a necessary condition
for the efficient analysis of great socio-economic systems, Keynes’ theory is
necessarily of importance for the renewal of political economy in the full mean-
ing of the term and for the integration of the social sciences.
Before going further, it is worth considering whether less or more attention
has been devoted to social or sociological problems in economic studies during
the last ten to fifteen years. Two trends must be mentioned.
In undertaking the economic analysis of the developing countries, economists
made a considerable effort to integrate research on economics, institutions and
structures; both the conservatively-minded and the radically-minded showed a
willingness to go beyond the narrow limits of neo-classical economic analysis.
However, in economic analyses that concern the advanced industrialized
countries, the opposite tendency predorninates.2’ The contrast is perhaps too
blatantly stated by comparing two publications cited above, i.e. the Survey of
Contemporary Economics (1949-1952) and the later Surveys of Economic Theory
(1965-1966). The first was written under the influence, still fairly strong, of the
great depression, and of the social consequences of the second world war, both
of which caused a shift to the left in public opinion, and thereby stimulated in-
terest in structural and political changes. This was bound to influence academic
economics. The first publication contained studies of such subjects as monop-
olies and the concentration of economic power, the political economy of
socialism, capitalist perspectives, labour economics; others analysed specific
topics against the broad background of production relations and the distribution
of national income, class contradictions, and so on.
Nothing of this kind appears in the later publication, which gives the impres-
sion that a stabilized and self-complacent affluent society can once again afford
to remain aloof in its ivory tower of ‘pure science’. It has no time for the great
social problems that were generated by anxiety about the future prospects of the
capitalist system and, where it treats them at all, the publication treats the theo-
retical problems of a socialist economy as marginal and unimportant.
c. Finally, there is one other characteristic feature of contemporary economics.
Economists become increasingly professional and specialized, with a growing
aversion to the creation of theoretical systems or the construction of a general
economic theory. The social sciences disintegrate (cf. particularly the separation