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344 Economics
dominate content; it is only in this sense that much of contemporary economic
literature can be accused of excessive formalization. By discarding this forma-
lization and a certain linking for doctrinal approaches that lead to a priori
thinking, economics could attain a much more important position among the
sciences in general, and the human sciences in particular.
NOTES
I. T. KOTARBINSKI, Praxiology: An Introduction to the Science of Eficient Action,
Oxford, Pergamon Press; Warsaw, PWN, 1965, p. 1.
2. We do not mean to say that praxiological-economic problems were alien to Sombart
and Weber, as this was not the case. Not only was Max Weber aquaintedwith
them, but he had many achievements to his credit. After Pareto, he was the first
to take a serious step towards replacing the extremely subjectivist hedonistic
interpretation of the category of utility by a theory of choice. He also made a
profound historico-sociological analysis of the quantification of the means and
goals of economic activity resulting from the development of a commodity-money
economy. Against this background, he presented the capitalistic process of
rationalizing economic activity which found its expression in the increasing use
of the principle of economic rationality. We know, however, that there is a long,
difficult and tortuous path from the historico-sociological analysis of the principle
of economic rationality to its employment in economic practise at a scale broader
than that of an enterprise or corporation.
3. The pioneering work by T. PARSONS and N. S. S~LSER, Economy and Society:
A Study of the Integration of Economics and Social Theory, London, 1956, must be
mentioned here. The authors dedicated the book to A. Marshall and M . Weber
as ‘the great pioneers in the integration of economic and social theory’. It is
significant that Weber’s leading work had the same title, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.
4. Such conceptions had been almost completely forgotten, so that e.g. Feldman’s
model of economic growth which had been devised in the twenties was a real
sensation, both in Eastern Europe and the West, after it had been exhumed by the
American economist E. D. Domar.
5. The following fragment from a book by Paul SAMUELSON, written during thesecond
World War, gives agoodexplanationof thisname: ‘If onesought for asinglecriterion
that would help to differentiate the contemporary economic theory from its classical
predecessor, one would probably conclude that it should be traced in the introduction
of the so-called subjective theory of value into economic theory. This
revolution in economic thought broke out almost simultaneously on three fronts,
and we associate with it the names of Jevons, Menger and Walras’ (Foundations of
Economic Analysis, p. 92). These three men are considered to be the creators of
three different schools in political economy: theneo-classical headed by A. Marshall,
the Austrian (psychological) and that of Lausanne. These are, however, but different
varieties of the subjectivist trend.
6. The hypothesis of the preferences in a household can be explained by assuming that
the consumer ‘arranges a competition for the commodities and selects those that
win the greatest number of points’, which secures the maximum amount of utility.
Writing on this assumption of subjectivist economists, J. Robinson holds that
they chase phantoms, and argues: ‘Consumers can be observed from outside to
choose what they choose; but each of us knows from his inner experience that a
consumer, even in such a prosaic act as buying a pound of tea, is reacting to a
whole complicated social situation, not to its strictly economic aspects only. We
know that he is influenced by moods ( .). We know (or at least salesmen believe)