Political economy and political correctness

Abstract

Political correctness is a complex topic, if only because those who hold that something is politically correct are not inclined to be open to critical evaluation of the merits of their political correctness. Such unwillingness to entertain open discourse is a characteristic of all social systems with supreme values (see Bernholz, 1991, 1993); thus under communism questioning the politically correct position that the society was on the path to Marxist Utopia could result in confinement in an asylum for the insane. Socialism espouses that the proper functioning of an economic system requires political allocation, and the subjugation of individual preferences and freedoms to a higher social order of priorities. The economic and social philosophy of political economy of the economic right takes the precisely opposite view, that market allocation is preferable to political allocation, and that individuals are better judges of the requisites of their own welfare than social planners. Yet, in the western economics literature, neither political economy, that of the left nor that of the right, has been politically correct. The political incorrectness of the political economy of the left can be understood in the denial of personal freedoms, if not in the inadequacies of the results achieved in practice by economic systems that sought to apply socialist principles.' My purpose here is to evaluate the basis for the political incorrectness of the political economy of the right, and to consider how this political incorrectness has influenced the literature of economics, with particular reference to the manner in which government is portrayed in economic models. In order to proceed, we shall require consensus on a definition of political correctness.