ABSTRACT
Economics has been a normative as well as a positive science from its very earliest days. It has always been positive in the sense of being analytical. It has always had some sort of image of what was possible and what was not. On the other hand, it has never hesitated to use this analysis to support some normative propositions about society and to suggest that some situations are better than others. This was true of the marcantilists, it was true of the English classical economists, it was true of the Marxists, and it is certainly true of the Chicago School. The institutionalists were refreshingly blatant about their normative interests. Thorstein Veblen certainly had very strong views about what he liked and what he did not like about society. John R. Commons was interested in saving capitalism by making it good, and Wesley Mitchell had no inhibitions about evaluating spending money as a backward art.
