Review of Austrian Economics - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

14 The Review of Austrian Economics, Vol. 5, No. 1
In analyzing the operation of the market system, economists are
accustomed to ignoring the personal identities of the actors; and
usually they are justified in doing so. We can probably understand
the demand for and supply of potatoes well enough without naming
consumer Jones as a demander and farmer Smith as a supplier. In
markets with many small demanders and suppliers, no one in particular
has any perceptible influence over the prevailing price or the
volume of sales. So nothing is gained by worrying about specific
people.
When economic methodology has been carried over to the analysis
of political, governmental, and legal matters, the nameless quality of
the analysis also has been carried over. Hence, public choice scholars
speak of voters, legislators, bureaucrats, and others only as anonymous
members of categories of actors. The theory is supposed to apply
regardless of which particular person occupies a theoretical category.
The theory is supposed to be—indeed one of its imagined glories is
that it is—general in the sense of abstract. (Like physics, you see: no
one cares which uranium atom we work with.) For some analytical
purposes, this approach may serve satisfactorily, but it has limits well
short of its pretensions.
One fact that should give pause to the analysts is that the political
actors themselves certainly seem to have acted as if particular personalities
mattered to them. Legions of Roosevelt haters seethed with
animosity toward "that man"—he is said to have agitated them so
mightily that they could not stand even the sound of his name! Would
they have hated any other democratic president as much and acted
the same if, say Al Smith had been elected in 1932? Not likely. Smith
himself served as an officer of the leading Roosevelt-haters' group,
the Liberty League (Leuchtenburg 1963, p. 92). Would nothing have
changed had someone other than Woodrow Wilson been president
during and immediately after World War I? Would the events of the
1980s have unfolded without essential difference if, say, Howard
Baker had been president instead of Ronald Reagan? In the mid-
19308, when the Supreme Court was more or less evenly divided
between those eager to affirm and those eager to deny the constitutionality
of major New Deal programs, did nothing of substance
depend on the personal character of Justice Owen J. Roberts, the
famous "swing man"?
If merely raising these questions does not indicate obvious
answers to them, then it must at least create serious doubts about
political explanations devoid of personalities. To most historians,
the significance of particular persons in determining the course of
political history seems manifest. Politics is not, in this regard, like