Economics died in 1870?

From the preface of my copy (1994) of Menger’s Principles of Economics. Hayek writes:

“The independent and practically simultaneous discovery of the principle of marginal utility by William Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger, and Léon Walras is too well known to require retelling. The year 1871, in which both Jevons’ Theory of Political Economy and Menger’s Grundsätze appeared, is now generally and with justice regarded as the beginning of the modern period in the development of economics.”

From the article:

Economics is harmful; it is “pernicious”. No germ of good can be found within. No value can be salvaged from it. It contains no rudiment of insight; it is “dead”, “bankrupt”, “collapsed”. The world would be better off without it. Therefore, its teachings should be discredited, its honours abolished, its representatives barred from public institutions, its institutional identity effaced, its centres of propagation encumbered or eliminated.

Incidentally, I some what agree with the so called “anti-economists” (especially the barring of its representatives from public institutions) if this quote is seen in light of modern Keynesian economics. The “economists” of today, the Krugman types ect., are little different from those of the historical school. Yet, economics hasn’t and can’t die, as evidenced by Menger’s 1871 work, and our writing on this blog.

I think you’re right. As long individuals have to choose between, say, harvesting crops or foraging for berries there will always be “economics” (in some form or another) to study. Economics, to my mind, is the study of human decision making. How can we avoid talking about that?

I haven’t read anything about this anti-economic business, but I would guess that those involved with it are just being pouty because they think it perpetuates “consumerism” or something vague like that. Sounds like something a sociologist might say.

Mr Marks: Right. I think Coleman is a mainstream economics type.

However, contra Mr. Vanmind and Mr. NewAnarchistMan above, what Coleman refers to in the article is the popular disavowal of economic science — something that indeed happened in the late nineteenth century in Germany. The rebirth in the popular mind of true economics has been a long road up, and is continuing to happen. I thought the tie-in with the German Historical School was especially apt, since their greatest critics were the Austrian economists.

Also, the “anti-economists” are not all wrong in their criticism of economics, a fact to which Coleman seems blind. In particular, if you click through to the Post-Autistics Economic Review mentioned in Coleman’s article, you will see several articles that expose the fallacies of cost-benefit analysis, wherein utilities are made cardinal, and interpersonal utilities compared.

“…what Coleman refers to in the article is the popular disavowal of economic science.”

Oh, I get it now. Heck, who hasn’t been doing that their whole lives? I myself have always claimed that if we could establish a proper free-market framework, there would be no need for studying “economics” at all.

Of course, the same could be said for that other-side-of-the-coin unobtainable false utopia: communism. Marx and Rand might has well have been separated at birth…

Econmics according Mises Study of human action. As for the genrael public, Peter is right. They were never in the right ballpark and are giving up on corrupt ideas called econmics.