Evaluation of Economic Systems

Abstract

In spite of the great progress made by economic science in recent decades, little scientific exactness and unanimity have been achieved in the field of analysis of comparative economic systems. It is true that this field is controversial, largely because it involves so many and so important elements of an ethical and political nature. As long as ethical and political aspects of life are matters of different and conflict? ing beliefs, different economic doctrines and systems will, to the ex? tent that they are based on specific ethical and political foundations, be judged and endorsed or rejected on ethical and political grounds, independently and even irrespective of their strictly economic merits. Yet, cannot economic systems be subjected to economic analysis without controversial ethical and political considerations interfering with an objective, scientific appraisal of their respective economic merits? To answer this question some clarification of the nature and scope of economic science is required. In Lionel Robbins' definition of economic science, which is certainly the most widely accepted one, he says that economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between and scarce which have alternative uses.1 This definition, as it stands, does not provide the clarification we need. While the aspect of means with which economic analysis is concerned is defined as precisely as it can be in a general definition, no light is thrown by the definition on the other essential element of it, viz. of ends. The author must him? self have realized this lack of balance; for he later qualified his defini? tional indefinitness on ends with the categoric statement that eco? nomics is not concerned with as such.2 Surely this negative qual? ification is not very helpful; it rather increases the ambiguity of the definition.