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Spengler, Joseph J. 1940. Sociological Presuppositions in
Economic Theory. SOUTHERN ECONOMIC JOURNAL 7: 131-57.
In the category of articles, I nominate Joseph J. Spengler's
"Sociological Presuppositions in Economic Theory." In this
publication Spengler advanced his distinctive approach to the
History of Economics. I nominate it not as a triumph in the
interpretation of the work of some economist or school of
economists, but for its influence on the nature of the History of
Economic Thought as a discipline.
Until the 1930s, the history of economic thought was largely a
matter of polemics. Most of it was historical argument for one or
another school of theory. The Neoclassical practitioners tended to
write books on the "scope and method" of the subject, but the
content of such works was a spin on the history of the subject.
The Historical economists wrote histories of the subject, focusing
on external factors [changing industrial conditions and changing
climates of opinion], but they, too, put a spin on history in the hope
of building the subject into a new, empirically based theory. These
early histories of economics were internalist in the sense that they
focused on the internal postulates, logic, and contradictions of the
subject, even when calling on external factors as explanatory
variables.
Out of the discussion of the nature of Economics in the 1930s, and
influenced by the sociologists, Sorokin, Malinkowski, and Talcott
Parsons, J.J. Spengler broke away from the polemics that had
biased earlier histories of economic thought. He considered the
influence of economic, political, social, and intellectual factors [the
general climate of opinion, the information environment] on the
progress of Economics in all its "schools", and as a profession.
He concentrated on external, rather than internal, factors in the
advance of the subject, allowing that much was to be explained by
irrational factors unrelated to its logical structure and empirical
investigations.
The importance of this break is evident in the subsequent quasi
divorce of the History of Economic Thought from Economics in
general, that is, from economic theory. The advance of Economics
and the histories of economic thought directly associated with that
advance have been internalist, and have continued the tradition of
inter-school polemics that marked the History of Economic
Thought before the nineteen thirties. Spengler's approach gave the
History of Economic Thought a different foundation, further from
Economics and closer to Intellectual History. It gave the History of
Economic thought an independence for which it paid by being
excluded from most post graduate programs in Economics. It
gained from its independence the stimulus of those elements in the
information environment of the late twentieth century that generated
a number of new departures in Intellectual History.
The continuing importance of Duke University in the History of
Economic Thought is a strong testimony to the importance of
Spengler's influence on the advance of the subject; and there
remain clearly evident traces of his externalist approach in current
work in the subject. Unfortunately the distinctive polemics that
marked Spengler's written contributions after 1940 became less
frequent in the History of Economic Thought after the late published
essays of Harry Johnson (See, for example, ON ECONOMICS
AND SOCIETY, 1975). It is my conjecture, however, that such
polemics, or something similar, survived in the work of T.W.
Hutchison, who also emerged, though in a different way, from the
information environment of the 1930s.
Robin Neill
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