From Socialists to Technocrats: The Depoliticisation of Australian Economics

Abstract

During the 1920s, the discipline and profession of economics in Australia underwent a dramatic transformation. As of 1918, ‘economics’ was deemed inseparable from ideology, and its practitioners were conceived as activists whose political agendas brought their knowledge claims into disrepute. By 1929, the same word denoted a ‘science’, a field of knowledge production populated by disinterested experts who proffered truths deemed essential to modern governance. This article returns to the decade in which economists went from pariahs to prophets and restores a sense of contingency to what transpired. Through a focus on R.F. Irvine and D.B. Copland, I argue that this process was underpinned by a reconceptualisation of the epistemic status and function of economic expertise. As Copland's positivism usurped Irvine's normative approach, economic knowledge was seemingly depoliticised. Once positioned above ideology, ‘economic scientists’ accumulated political power and assumed the norm-shaping role they have inhabited ever since.