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350 Economics
of transition to socialism and about the so-called oriental mode of production. On
this latter point, see E. HOBSBAWM’S introduction to the English edition of Marx’s
manuscript Pre-Capitalist Forms ofProduction, London, 1964, andvarious articles in
La Penske.
68. Actually, Rostow is close to all the authors who, indulging in statistical formalism,
attempt to derive quantitative laws of development via regression equations - from
individual variables in per capita level of income.
69. Rostow’s book has also met with many criticisms on historical grounds. One of
many is the article by H. BAUDET and J. H. VAN STUYVENBERG in Weltwirtschaft-
Iiches Archiv 15 (I), 1963, pp. 57-58.
70. It becomes more and more difficult to separate mathematics from logic. Mathematization
is used here to include the application in economics of up-to-date, formalized
apparatus of logic, of the theory of decisions, etc.
71. A considerable part of the so-called mathematical economics was devoted to
deducing consequences from the unrealistic assumptions of perfect competition
and of automatic convergent adaptative market processes. Welfare economics
builds a whole prescriptive system on the assumption of the existence of individual
utility functions, subject to maximization. Besides the fact that it is impossible to
make such utility functions operational, Mrs. Joan Robinson was right when she
attacked ‘the idle wheels of the pure theory of welfare’, drawing attention to its
ideological bias: ‘Setting the whole thing out in algebra is a great help. The symmetrical
relations between x and y seem smooth and amiable, entirely free from
the associations of acrimony which are apt to be suggested by the relations between
‘capital’ and ‘labour’, and the apparent rationality of the system of distribution of
the product between the factors of production conceals the arbitrary nature of
distribution of the factors between the chaps’ (Economic Philosophy).
72. Econometrics deals with items (a) and (b), without exhausting them. Cf. Lange:
‘Econometrics is the science which deals, by statistical methods, with the determination
of concrete, quantitative regularities occurring in economic life’. With
the development of planning, planimetrics tends to become a separate branch of
econometrics.
73. A good recent example of an application to economics of a method worked out
by physicists and engineers for their own practical use is the ‘dimensional analysis’
already referred to.
74. We agree with Pierre Auger that ‘il n’y a pas de savant qui ne pense continuellement
par modkles - m6me s’il ne I’avoue ni aux autres ni a hi-meme’, but only the logical
construction of the model enables us to penetrate it and seize upon new features,
which are in turn subjected to empirical verification.
75. In principle, tools exist which facilitate an optimum choice of techniques and the
short-term optimization of foreign trade. Long-term optimization of foreign trade
involves finding the most efficient set of export-oriented or import-substituting investment
projects. However, there are no uniform criteria for optimization of a
consumption pattern; because of the number of variables and their heterogeneity -
rapidly increasing with the rise in living standards - this remains one of the most
difficult problems in the theory of economics.
76. Comments based on similar experiences in the USSR, France, Poland and Hungary
(cf. the papers by N. FEDORENKO and M . GODELIER in: The Social Sciences: Prob-
lems and Orientations, op. cit.).
77. Cf. the pertinent sections in Part 11 of this chapter.
78. Cf. Part 11.
79. For a ‘praxiological ’interpretation of the same, see above.