We live in a real economy as well as in the Alice in Wonderland that is inhabited by images and mental models invented by economists over the centuries. Of course, when the world changed, so did the socially constructed language used to understand and manage markets and economies. Yes, economists and others significantly contributed to our understanding of markets and what drives them. At the same time, some of this understanding is based on conjectures and values inherited from the far and more recent past.
But old dictionaries, like old soldiers, never die; they just fade away. 1 Some donât even do that. They have a lasting influence on what we see and what we understand. We can easily become prisoners of our vocabularies; we are their marionettes.
Vocabularies, of course, are absolutely essential, for they help answer the basic epistemological question of how we know what we know. We cannot even ask questions without using language. We are surrounded by and dependent on symbols.
Each discipline and profession has its own technical language that members must master. This is not just for medical doctors and lawyers but also for economists. The Oxford Dictionary of Economics (2009 edition) defines 2500 key economic terms. The eight-volume set of The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (2008) runs to 7344 pages, with 5.7 million words in 1900 different articles authored by some 1500 eminent contributors.
Student-economists can drown in the thousands of meanings they are mandated to memorize.
Economists, however, are not unique. Psychology, political science, geography, and sociology have their own specialized vocabularies that instruct their respective members on how to view and understand the world. And the same holds for members of the clergy: The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1997) has 1136 pages of terms and explanations. There are other dictionaries and encyclopedias specific to the multitude of individual faiths, Christian and many others.
Religious dictionaries are not unique in mixing factual, historical, and value-based assumptions. They help practitioners and others to filter and organize the world around them. This is certainly true for economists as well.
Learning a disciplineâs or tradeâs language is an essential rite de passage in oneâs educational and career trajectory. 2 Swallow, accept, memorize, and move on. What you swallow, however, might be poison in the near future, as Chris Beneke suggested in his review article on âthe coercive moral establishment in the early (American) republic.â
Describing the impact of early republican religious culture, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that Americans could not conceiveâcould not bring to cognitionâwhat their Christian faith wouldnât allow them. They were âobliged to profess an ostensible respect for Christian morality and equityâŠâ As bold as they were in enterprise, Tocqueville thought these people were meek in matters of the intellect. 3
Economists who represent competing schools of analysis strive, it seems, to dominate our contemporary moral universe. Shared as well as disputed, analytical and moral philosophies held by those within the discipline can compete with and overlap one another. Economic dictionaries may list the same words but not the same meanings assigned to them.
Moreover, the language of economics can be quite quickly dated so that members of this discipline no longer have an adequate window into understanding contemporary life. Language itself is part of the problem. Still, members of all professions and trades must learn the dictionary entrees ordained by their discipline. They must also delearn the fallacies of earlier vocabularies that were born in the evil predisciplinary world of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Modern economists beckon us to their disciplineâs Garden of Eden. Yes, lots of moral overtones and assumptions can be found in the holy dictionaries of modern economics. 4
Economists and others attuned to the importance of language will surely recognize themselves in this Mother Goose rhyme that Karl N. Llewellyn used in his lectures to incoming first-year students in preâWorld War II Columbia Universityâs Law School. Student-lawyers must unlearn an old language while memorizing a new one:
There was a man in our town,And he was wondrous wise,He jumped into a bramble bush,And scratched out both his eyes;But when he saw his eyes were out,With all his might and main,He jumped into another bush,And scratched âem in again. 5
This introductory chapter begins a long journey that
- (1)introduces a few vocabulary terms and assumptions found in the historical writings of economists,
- (2)begins to raise questions about this vocabulary and the assumptions behind individual words,
- (3)identifies some of the questions raised about the epistemology of this now-well-established and rightfully respected discipline, and
- (4)explains why this is a book about the moral basis of economic thinking rather than a now-traditional book on economics and markets.
Later chapters will give special attention to how economists understood the now-common value (and empirical) term inequality.
Yes, economists have contributed much to our understanding of the world, but this understanding often rests on questionable conjectures, assumptions, and values. They, economists, like the rest of us, are prisoners of our dictionaries and the hidden values we inherit from the past.
We Are Prisoners of Our Dictionaries
There is always the danger that our vocabularies become iron cages that blind us to what is really happening in an ever-changing world. Habitual ways of thinking, as will be revisited later, need not be rational thinking.
It is now somewhat passĂ© to explore how the vocabularies and mental models of past imaginary worlds shape our understanding of the present. Winston Churchill, for example, spoke before the House of Commons in 1943: âWe shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.â Vocabularies are like buildings: they are created and then shape those who later follow the creators. That is also one of the intended consequences of knowing oneâs holy books.
The House of Commons, the building that shaped the world of Churchill, had a long architectural, institutional, and social history, as did the associated English polity with its rich legacy that includes the effects that the Scottish and English Enlightenments had on how the English-speaking world understood itself over time.
The early Enlightenment innovators were moral philosophers. But when some thinkers began to focus more on the changing economy of England and the world, moral philosophy was institutionally relabeled as political economy only to be renamed by Alfred Marshall as economics and economics only.
Names may change, but dictionaries, values, and mental models have a long shelf life. They can hide as well as shine understanding on the current world in which we now live.
It can be helpful to recognize that early moral philosophers, political economists, and economists lived in an evidence and number-poor world. Authors had to invent new words, refurbish old ones, and imagine mental models using these words. Once invented, these models and their vocabularies shaped how the world is understood. But the world and its economies change over time. As a result, mental models and vocabularies can soon mask significant transformations and current challenges.
Unfortunately, as William Faulkner observed: âThe past is never dead. Itâs not even past.â However, any review of older economistsâ writings indicates that as economies and societies changed, so did some of the vocabularies invented to understand and manage markets. âProgressâ or change was recognized. Still, although one might assume that âold thinkâ would have a decent burial, that has not always happened in the discipline of economics. The vocabulary of economics is still inhabited by aardvark-like words, concepts, and mental models, some of which can too easily mask questionable values and assumptions, as we will explore in later chapters.
Again, economists have their own rich language and vocabulary that can be found in the disciplineâs standard dictionaries. But let us place these dictionaries in a larger context.
As George Orwell argued, political language, a peculiar patois, âis designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.â Some (certainly not all) of economic language terms warrant the same indictment. This seems especially so among nonacademic polemical economists peddling their bespoken imperatives from the halls of ideologically driven think tanks. 6
Orwell gave advice that at least some economists accepted: âNever use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.â In his Nineteen Eighty-Four, he introduced âNewspeak,â a controlled language created by the totalitarian state Oceania as a tool to narrow the range (freedom) of thought. Any form of thought alternative to the partyâs construct is classified as âthoughtcrime.â
Controlling what are acceptable paradigms and languages can itself become a tool to control how we think about markets and the agents within them.
Some critics might charge economists (some but not all of them) with viewing the world through rose-colored glasses that distort reality in ways to benefit some while harming others. Thomas Kuhn, for example, saw the consequences that scientific language can have. He argued that structures of power are embedded in structures of thought. Which claims about âtruthâ hold sway depends on what mental models one accepts.
Some economic and social models leave less room than others for selected policy initiatives. For example, some functionalist theories in sociology and anthropology, as well as economics, seem to assume that modern markets and societies are self-correcting systems that do not and should not be targets for reform. Que Sera, Sera.
Dictionaries of economics and economic textbooks can become a form of Economics-speak analogous to ...