ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, we started to study the long-dominant paradigm of neoclassical economics. We did so from a structural viewpoint, asking ourselves what were the key conceptual building blocks of the paradigm – we identified six of them, and then reduced them to three key (meta)axioms: methodological individualism (M.Ind), methodological instrumentalism (M.Inst), and methodological equilibration (M.Eq). However, as we also found out, none of these three axioms needs to be confined to the specific version the neoclassical paradigm gives of it. M.Ind and M.Inst need not be confined to “rationality” viewed as isolated maximization by agents made interdependent only through an anonymous “field” that centralizes their decisions. M.Eq need not be confined to “restfulness” and to the concomitant method of comparative statics. In other words, it is possible to have explicitly interdependent rational agents whose strategic and/or exploratory interactions generate an orderly but dynamic trajectory. All these features have, indeed, since then been taken into account by neoclassicals who advanced into “post-neoclassical” territory – game theory, complexity economics, and behavioral/psychological economics. We will delve into such efforts in Part III. Before doing so, however, it is still worthwhile – in our present context of exploring our neoclassical “roots” and the reasons for the paradigm’s past success – to discuss neoclassicism from another, somewhat different angle: not so much the structural angle as the political-philosophy angle. What sort of society did neoclassical economists have in mind, what sort of role were economists supposed to play in it, and how did these conceptions impact on the way economists were supposed to do their theoretical and empirical work?
