ABSTRACT
Economics is, and always has been, considered the most individualistic of the social sciences (Hausman, 1992: 97f; Bicchieri, 1993: 9).1 It would not be correct, however, to maintain that all economics is individualistic. More precisely, the claim should be that orthodox, or mainstream, economics is individualistic (Himmelweit, 1977: 22ff). In addition, there are the remnants of some heterodox research programmes, such as Marxism and institutionalist economics, which are clearly and explicitly holistic – except for the recently emerging ‘analytical Marxism’, which is a rational choice theory based on methodological individualism (see pp. 309-18). There is also a waning ‘neo-Ricardian school of economics’, which is presumably not individualistic.2 Finally, there is macroeconomics, which is hard to classify along the individualist-holist axis. The prevailing opinion, however, is that macroeconomics must be provided with solid microfoundations in order to qualify as a strictly individualist theory (Janssen, 1993). More exactly, then, the claim should be that mainstream microeconomics is individualistic, or believed to be so (Nelson, 1986; 1989).
