Economic Science and the Austrian Method_3

Economic Science and the Austrian Methodcategories-which are to result for an actor from this situationor situational change. The law of marginal utili~ forinstance,52 follows from our indisputable knowledge of thefact that every actor always prefers what satisfies him more overwhat satisfies him less, plus the assumption that he is faced withan increase in the supply ofa good (a scarce mean) whose unitshe regards as ofequal serviceabili~byone additional unit. Fromthis it follows with logical necessity that this additional unit canthen only be employed as a means for the removal of anuneasiness that is deemed less urgentthan the leastvaluable goalpreviously satisfied by a unit ofsuch a good. Provided there isno flaw in the process of deduction, the conclusions whicheconomic theorizing yields, no different in the case of anyother economic proposition from the case of the law ofmarginal utilit:}', must be valid a priori. These propositions'validity ultimately goes back to nothing but the indisputableaxiom ofaction. To think, as empiricism does, that these propositionsrequire continual empirical testing for their validation isabsurd, and a sign ofoutright intellectual confusion. And it isno less absurd and confused to believe, as historicism does, thateconomics has nothing to say about constant and invariablerelations but merely deals with historically accidental events. Tosay so meaningfully is to prove such a statement wrong, assaying anything meaningful at all already presupposes actingand a knowledge ofthe meaning of the categories of action.IIIThis will suffice here as an explanation ofMises's answerregarding the quest for the foundations ofeconomics. I shall520n the law of marginal utility see Mises, Human Action, pp. 119-27 andRothbard, Man, Economy, and State, pp. 268-71.64 • The Ludwig von Mises Institute