![Progressive Jonathan Lipow Defends Economics](https://www.econlib.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/9781804411919_1728x.png.webp)
This is the second of my series of posts on Jonathan Lipow’s 2023 book, Pubic Policy for Progressives.
In “Economics without Apology,” a subsection of Chapter 1, Jonathan addresses his concern about progressives rejecting economics, writing:
Now, lamentably, many progressives regard economics with great suspicion. Indeed, instinctual hostility towards economics is a textbook example of the Left’s tendency to take automatic positions without reference to either basic moral principles or scientific evidence. For example, many progressives believe that Adam Smith, the founder of the field that later came to be known as economics, invented capitalism or justified its excesses. This is simply untrue. Smith’s seminal contribution, The Wealth of Nations, described the systemic features of the capitalist institutions that were already emerging a hundred years earlier to replace the feudal order in Europe, and analyzed both their virtues and vices. And far from preaching that greed is “good,” Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments – the book that laid the intellectual foundation upon which Wealth of Nations was built – strongly associated “good” with social solidarity and concern for the plight of others.
He then follows with one of my favorite quotes from The Theory of Moral Sentiments:
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrows of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous or the humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility.
He also gets the origin of the term “Dismal Science” right:
The early economists pressed for freedom of religion and conscience, argued for women’s rights, and, above all, took an uncompromising stand hostile to the institution of slavery. All this long before any of it was fashionable with the cool kids. In fact, the reason why economics is often called “the Dismal Science” is that early economists had a bad habit of ruining dinner parties by lecturing the other guests about the profound evil of forced servitude. The nickname was actually coined by Thomas Carlyle, who was trying to delegitimize economists opposed to his “visionary” proposal to reintroduce slavery to the United Kingdom.
I’m not sure about the “dinner parties” part but he correctly identifies the originator of the term and Carlyle’s reason for coining the term.
READER COMMENTS
nobody.really
Jul 19 2024 at 4:17pm
Perhaps Jonathan Lipow is referring to the quest for the fabled “golden ratio”–reflecting the maximum percentage of economists you could have at a faculty dinner party without ruining the conversation.
Andrew T Gardner
Jul 19 2024 at 4:25pm
The first day that I read about Muphry’s Law of Editing and Proofreading — I see the Pubic Policy for Progressives in the wild –– bravo!
Monte
Jul 20 2024 at 5:14pm
Teach a parrot the terms ‘supply and demand’ and you’ve got an economist. – Thomas Carlyle (a.k.a. the arch-nemesis of economics)
Mactoul
Jul 20 2024 at 11:46pm
Most economists, I guess, work in public sector, either in government or universities. And generally speaking, tend to be in favor of government or interventions. Consider the impact of London School of Economics and Harold Laski on newly independent countries.
So, given that government interventions are net negative, it is arguable that economists have been net negative for human welfare.
Mactoul
Jul 21 2024 at 12:10am
Carlyle proposed to reintroduce slavery to West Indies, not to United Kingdom.
Per Wikipedia, the first use of dismal by Carlyle was to Malthus — no favorite of liberal economists. I guess the liberals would agree with Carlyle here.
steve
Jul 21 2024 at 1:32pm
My impression is that people on the left and right are both suspicious of ideas economists provide that counter what they want to believe. Are progressives worse than others in this regard? If by progressive he means the more extreme on the left then I would agree.
Steve
Roger McKinney
Jul 22 2024 at 10:25am
Marx was the greatest opponent of economics. The left has always used its contempt for the science as a defense of its ideology. The “right” who despise economics, like the national conservatism of JD Vance and Marco Rubio, aren’t the right, but are social conservatives who are socialists on economics, in other words, democratic fascists.
Roger McKinney
Jul 22 2024 at 10:28am
Smith wrote that the Dutch had most fully implemented his ssystem of natural liberty, which suggests he was learning from them. Where did the Dutch get it? From the theologians at the University of Salamanca during the Reformation. Locke got his ideas from the same people.
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