While acknowledging that the
three great issues of metaphysics - God, freedom
and immortality - could not be logically
determined, Kant asserted that their essence is a
necessary presupposition. In his subsequent
publications, Critique of Practical Reason
(1788) and Critique of Judgment (1790),
Kant asserted as a moral
law his famous categorical
imperative, requiring moral actions to be
unconditionally and universally binding to
absolute goodwill. Similarly, in the moral law of
economics, there is a categorical imperative
requiring moral economic actions to be
unconditionally and universally binding to
goodwill.
Yet goodwill is singularly
absent in market fundamentalism not by default but
by design. God and immortality appear to have been
claimed by some market fundamentalists on the
basis of their flawed logic on the issue of
freedom of market participants to do harm to
others to enhance their individual self interest,
and that if large number of market participants
are free to do harm to others in a free market,
social good would somehow result. John Stuart
Mill's view on individual freedom is limited to a
person's freedom to do only that which does not
harm others.
Positive/normative questions
are distinguished by the "is/ought" dichotomy.
John Neville Keynes, lesser known father of John
Maynard Keynes, divided economics into "positive"
(the study of "what is", and the way the economy
actually works), "normative" (the study of "what
should be"), and the "art of economics" (applied
economics - how to make "what should be" into
"what is"). Intervention, be it by government or
by market participants, is inescapable for
progress.
In his essay on positive
economics, Friedman tried to deny the "is/ought"
dichotomy by arguing that answers to "ought"
questions necessarily depend on a prior
establishment of "what is". Nevertheless, most
critics of Friedman's positive methodology feel he
was arguing against normative economics and thus
assume that he was not only arguing in favor of
positive economics but also condoning what exists
as valid.
Yet "what is" affects "what
ought to be", reflecting the value judgment of
applied economics. Thus positive methodology must
precede normative prescriptions. But if positive
methodology is used to justify "what is" without
proceeding to "what ought to be", then positive
investigation becomes superfluous to human
progress.
The claim of the Chicago School
that prosperity will spring from markets left free
of government interference has been challenged by
developing facts in recent decades. Recurring
financial crises in free-market economies appear
to have jelled into a pattern of 10-year cycles,
as evidenced by the crashes of 1987, 1997 and
2007. By now, after three decades of hegemonic
dominance by anti-government policy penchant and a
philosophy of unchallenged faith in the efficacy
of private enterprise, the Chicago School theology
can no longer rest on the secure platform of
political sponsorship provided by those who
directly benefited from a rigged market disguised
as manifestation of economic freedom.
Fundamentally, it is a stretch of logic to
assume that numerous individual market
participants each acting in strict self interest
and by definition at the expense of the common
interest (otherwise it would not be self interest
by definition if self interest is congruent with
the common interest), would mysteriously lead to
an aggregate contribution to the common good.
The collapse of market fundamentalism as a
valid theory and the damage it has done to
economies everywhere have put the Chicago School
theology on the defensive. Its big lie has been
exposed by facts on two levels. The Chicago Boys'
claim that helping the rich is the only way to
help the poor is not only exposed as not true; it
turns out that market fundamentalism hurts not
only the poor and the powerless - it hurts
everyone, rich and poor, albeit in different ways.
When wages are kept low to fight
inflation, the low-wage regime causes overcapacity
through over investment from excess profit.
Monetary easing to provide liquidity under such
conditions produces hyperinflation that hurts also
the rich. The fruits of Friedman's test are in -
and they are all rotten. Using unemployment (zero
wages) and under-employment (inadequate wages) to
fight inflation created by central bank monetary
excess (misapplied liquidity) is a policy of
economic suicide.
Critical Theory in
the social sciences The social sciences are
fields that study society through scientific
methodology. The term refers to a number of fields
outside of the natural sciences. The social
sciences include: anthropology, archaeology,
business administration, criminology, development
studies, economics, geography, history, law,
linguistics, political science, sociology,
international relations, communication, and other
fields that straddle social science, natural
science and behavioral science.
The term
social science may be used, however, in the
specific context of referring to the original
science of society established in 19th century
sociology. Karl Marx (1818-1883), Emile Durkheim
(1858-1917) and Max Weber (1864-1920) are
generally referred to as the principal architects
of modern social science.
Positivism
refers to a set of epistemological perspectives
and philosophies of science which holds that the
scientific method is the most suitable approach to
uncovering the processes by which both social
events and human activities occur. Though the
positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in
the history of Western thought from ancient Greece
to the present time, the concept was defined in
modern terms in early 19th century by French
philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857). Comte,
widely recognized as a founder of the modern
sociology and a leading framer of the modern
doctrine of positivism, was strongly influenced by
utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825)
to whom Comte, 38 years younger, served as
secretary for a time when latter was a teenager.
Henri de Saint-Simon and
state-technocratic socialism Henri de
Saint-Simon advocated a form of state-technocratic
socialism in which industrialists would lead
society and found a new national community based
upon cooperation and technological progress, which
would be capable of eliminating poverty for the
masses to replace historical feudalism. Replacing
the church as the sole spiritual guardian for
society, Saint-Simon felt the guidance of society
should be given to men of science qualified to
organize a new society which only productive labor
is entitled to rule.
One wonders what
Saint-Simon would have to say were he confronted
with Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case
of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde or its modern real
life version in the ideological conflict and
dishonorable personal betrayal between nuclear
physicists J Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller
on the controversial question of further post-war
development of nuclear weapons with building
hydrogen bombs, and the ignoble role Teller played
in the government's revocation of security
clearance for Oppenheimer in the early phase of
the Cold War.
Teller's shameful betrayal
of an innocent colleague by testifying that
Oppenheimer might be a security risk led to Teller
being ostracized by practically all of his
colleagues in the scientific community for the
rest of his life. Teller was widely recognized as
the real-life model of Stanley Kubrik's 1964
anti-war black comedy film Dr Strangelove or:
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the
Bomb, based on Peter George's Cold War
thriller novel Red Alert.
Saint-Simon did not address the issue of
the adversarial relationship between management
and labor in the modern industrial economy, since
he viewed productive labor as the rightful ruler
of a non-exploitative socialist order constructed
by men of science. In such a socialist society,
confrontation between labor and management would
be structurally nonexistent.
Saint-Simon
was so impressed by the absence of hereditary
aristocratic titles and social privileges he saw
in the United States in its early society that he
renounced his own aristocratic title in Europe and
came to favor a form of scientific meritocracy for
organizing society, becoming convinced that modern
science was the key to progress and that it would
be possible to develop a society based on
objective scientific principles. As the global
economy developed, except for a brief period when
the likes of Thomas Edison and Alexander Bell were
financially successful, inventors, scientists and
engineers would come to be dominated by
manipulators of capital to serve the principle of
maximum return on capital.
Saint-Simon's
early publications, such as his Introduction
aux travaux scientifiques du XIXe siecle
(Introduction to scientific discoveries of the
19th century) (1803) and his Memoire sur la
science de l'homme (Notes on the Science of
Mankind) (1813), being a eulogy to the policies of
Napoleon in support of science, demonstrate his
(Saint-Simon's) faith in science as a means to
regenerate society.
Saint-Simon envisioned
the present-day European Union in his 1814 essay
De la reorganization de la societe
europeenne (On the Reorganization of European
Society), written in collaboration with his then
secretary, historian Augustin Thierry, who
enthusiastically embraced the socio-political
ideals of the French Revolution and Saint-Simon's
vision of an ideal future society. However,
Saint-Simon expected Britain to be the lead in
forming a continent sharing the same laws and
institutions. As it turned out, British legal and
institutional mismatch with Napoleonic Continental
Europe emerged as the main obstacle in Britain's
joining the European Union.
As a
scientific thinker, Saint-Simon ironically and
unscientifically relied on anecdotal evidence to
support his findings, without developing a
systematic theory. For example, he seemed to be
unaware or unconcerned that feudalism, which he
criticized as a non-merit-based hierarchical
social system, was initially organized as a form
of meritocracy. The aristocracy was initially made
up of men of distinction, mostly warriors, on whom
nobility status was conferred by the recognizing
royal authority on behalf of feudal society. It
was the attempt of meritorious individuals to
perpetuate the earned privilege society granted to
them by passing on the earned privilege to their
offsprings without their offsprings having to earn
it that led to the rise of hereditary feudalism.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
