VALUE JUDGMENTS AND ECONOMICS

Abstract

I AM not sure whether Professor Meek is right in claiming that there was a conscious separation between economics and ethics as early as the eighteenth century. My impression is that in England, at any rate, this did not happen until rather later, around the middle of the nineteenth century. But whether we trace this development back to the eighteenth century or merely to the middle of the nineteenth century, it remains a rather curious fact that even present-day ' orthodox' writers on the methodology of economics still find it necessary to expound, and insist upon, the principle of ethical neutrality. I must confess I find this rather puzzling, since, as Professor Meek points out, this is the view of their subject which most present-day economistshe and I included-in any case accept. In the circumstances one would have thought that Professor Stigler was right when he commented that' it does not seem necessary to retread familiar ground to show that economics as a positive science is ethically neutral '.* Yet a no less distinguished economist, Professor Haberler, while reviewing a recent Festschrift3 welcomed ' the spirited defence of the principle of Wertfreiheit 'provided by one of the contributors and regarded it' unfortunately nowadays more needed than ever despite Cairnes, Max Weber, Pigou, etc... .I