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Economics 349
and 0. HIRSCHMAN. We follow the approach of K. LASKI, Zarys teorii reprodukcji
gospodarki socjalistycznej [An Outline of the Theory of Reproduction of Socialist
Economy], Warsaw, 1965.
62. The above argument can be mutatis mutandis transplanted into the province of
micro-economics to describe the functions of the economist in the enterprise where
the scope of ‘political’ factors influencing the decisions is, of course, narrowed. A
certain indetermination resulting from incomplete knowledge still remains, however,
and calls for political-like decisions even there. In current language we speak
of a firm’s policies.
63. Or more exactly, the mathematicians tell us that we should find the class of decisions
that are Pareto-optimal with respect to such a many-dimensional objective.
Usually, this still leaves a large area of indeterminacy (Cf. K. SZANIAWSKI, ‘The
Logic of Economic Calculus’, in : The Social Sciences: Problems and Orientations,
op. cit., p. 163).
64. One of the important steps in model building consists in determining the permissible
variability of parameters.
65. Cf. the considerations of the American anthropologist E. R. WOLF which, mutatis
mutandis, may also find an application in economics (Anthropology, Englewood
Cliffs (N.J.), 1964, pp. 53-54): ‘The fact is that the concept of culture no longer denotes
a watertight category, clearly separate and separable from similarly watertight
categories, such as the Environment or Man as an Organism. We have moved
on to emphasize interrelationships, and tovisualizechainsof systems withinsystems,
rather than isolated phenomena with impermeable boundaries. Even when particular
investigators single out one aspect of reality for intensive consideration, they are
aware much more than in the past that abstraction, the “taking out of context”,
involves a complementary action, in which the abstracted phenomenon is returned
to its “ground”. We are less willing to assert that culture possesses this or that absolute
attribute, that it is a mechanical sum of culture traits, or that it is like an organism,
more willing to consider that it may be thought ofas a sum of culture traits, or
as an organism, depending on the appropriate context. The statements made about
culture or cultures now include the observer, and the observer has grown sophisticated
in his knowledge that there may be other positions of vantage from which
the object may be viewed, and that he may himself occupy successive points of
vantage in approaching his “object” of study. Any object can thus be seen as
belonging to multiple systems: a human population may be considered as carriers
of culture, related to other cultures in both space and time; or as breeding ground
for micro-organisms that prey on it; or as agents of ecological disequilibrium when
its members fire the forest cover in pursuit of game or prepare the soil for cultivation.
Each aspect, singled out for analysis, may be viewed in its particular systematic
characteristics, in orderliness in which a change in one part reacts to other parts; but
the systems intertwine so that one system represents a component in another that, in
turn, may form the co-ordinate of still a third.’ (The italics are ours.)
66. This seems to be H. LEIBENSTEIN’S attitude (cf. his article already quoted from
Kyklos 19, 1966, Fasc. I) and his interpretation of the influence of environmental
variables. For him, development theories ‘are theories about unfolding segments of
history in an environment that remains constant’ (p. 3), or they find application
where the influence of strategic variables is much stronger than that of environment.
Hence, his less limiting statement: ‘Now what should we expect from a development
theory? Briefly put, we should expect a conceptual framework that would
facilitate the creation of theories or models that contain manipulable variables
whose dosages can be raised sufficiently to swamp the environmental effects, to
obtain sufficiently accurate directional predictions for a limited period of time’ (op.
cit., p. 18). Still, Leibenstein seems to deny the possibility of controlling environment
and the ‘matrix of general history’ in which economic phenomena are embedded.
67. Cf. the discussions which have been going on for many years about different ways