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Economics 345
that he is influenced by appeals to fear and snobbishness that advertisers cunningly
trail before him. We know that his consumption is a complicated intertwining
pattern of goods and services so that the idea of putting any one pair of items, or
any one item and purchasing power in general, through a competitive examination
is a very misleading metaphor to apply to it. We know that his pattern of consumption
is much influenced by the habits of his forbears . ..’ (J. ROBINSON, The Accumulation
of Capital, London, 1956, p. 389).
7. M. BLAUG, Economic Theory in Retrospect, Homewood (Ill.), 1963, p. 612.
8. L. ROBBINS, The Nature and Significance of Economic Science, 2nd ed., London,
1945, P. 16.
9. L. ROBBINS, op. cit., pp. 16-17.
IO. This is pointed out by a number of authors, e.g. K. ROTHSCHILD, ‘The Old and the
New - Some Recent Trends in the Literature of German Economics’, The American
Economic Review, March 1964.
11. J. ROBINSON wrote in her preface to the Essays in the Theory of Economic Growth
(1962): ‘My chief concern is to lead economics out from the marsh of a static
theory of equilibrium. Once it is put on clear water, the possibility of attractive
wanderings in many directions opens up.’ A similar view is frequently expressed by
many contemporary economists.
12. See J. ROBINSON, ‘Kalecki and Keynes’, in: Problems of Economic Dynamics and
Planning, Warsaw, PWN, 1964.
13. This opinion wil arouse vehement protest from many Western economists. For it
is a common conviction that modern economists are able to remain aloof from
ideologies. To the authors of this study, such a conviction reflects the growing
‘ideal image’ of the specialized economist who may not always be quite aware of
his own ideological assumptions.
14. F. VON HAYEK, Scientism and the Study of Society, Glencoe (Ill.), Free Press, 1952,
Chap. VI.
15. P. A. SAMUELSON closes his considerations of macro-economic analysis by a conclusion
which he calls ‘a grand neo-classical synthesis’. It may be quoted at length, as
it demonstrates how the general methodological approach has been conditioned by
the structural changes of contemporary capitalist economy and by the needs of
economic practice. Samuelson writes : ‘By means of appropriately reinforcing
monetary and fiscal policies, our mixed-enterprise system can avoid the excesses
of boom and slump and can look forward to healthy progressive growth. This
fundamental being understood, the paradoxes that robbed the older classical principles
dealing with small-scale “microeconomics” of much of their relevance and
validity - these paradoxes will now lose their sting. In short, mastery of modern
analysis of income determination genuinely validates the basic classical pricing
principles; and the economist is now justified in saying that the broad cleavage
between microeconomics and macroeconomics has been closed‘ (Economics, 5th
ed., New York-Toronto-London, 1961, p. 403). In the widespread tendency to organic
unification of macro- and micro-economic analyses, which can also be
observed in the cconomic literature of the socialist countries, one can obviously
agree with the view that a ‘great synthesis’ is at stake. But the mere spread of this
phenomenon, which has quite different theoretical and practical roots in the socialist
countries, is not necessarily sufficient justification for calling this synthesis ‘neoclassical’.
16. We shall come back to these in subsequent sections.
17. T. C. KOOPMANS, op. cit., p. 129. Interesting excerpts from a speech delivered by
Harrod as early as 1938 are quoted by Koopmans: ‘Exposed as a bore, themethodologist
cannot take refuge behind a cloak of modesty. On the contrary, he
stands forward ready by his own claim to give advice to all and sundry, to criticize
the work of others which, whether valuable or not, at least attempts to be constructive;
he sets himself up as the final interpreter of the past and dictator of future
efforts’ (ibid., p. 130.).