Economics, and Judgments of Value

Without a doubt, one of the most vexing faults to be found in economic analyses is the inclusion of judgments of value into the inquiry. As an action, a judgment of value is one during which individual expresses his preferences, and, due to the fact that they are, by their very nature subjective, there can be no question of their validity. All that one can say is that a judgment of value was uttered for there is no method by which one can disprove a judgment of value without countering it with others. This results in a predicament since the science of economics is empirical in the sense that it is concerned with the world as it is, not opinions about it. Hence, like all sciences, economics concerns itself only with existential propositions, descriptions asserting existence or nonexistence, and they must never be replaced with judgments of value. Rather, it seeks further knowledge, and understanding of the causality, concatenation, and features of events involving human action. Economics should not, of course, be interested in the dreams of the utopians, of questions of what society should look like; instead, economic analysis is to be limited to empirical reality.

One of the most common objections about the wertfreiheit nature of economics is that judgments of value are intrinsically tied to the process of making an examination that the economists’ assessments are, by their very nature, tied to his judgments of value. This is a resuscitated form of the old Marxist bias doctrine that was created to fight against the Classical economists’ by asserting economics was tainted by latent prejudices. Instead of arguing with the liberals, the bias doctrine allowed Marxists to cry out bias and label them “sycophants of the bourgeoisie” without ever having to directly refute their claims. However, even if a theory is corrupted by judgments of value, it must still be refuted, and if it cannot be disproved then its validity must be accepted. The bias doctrine enables discrimination on a large level, it enables a self-appointed sage to dictate who can, and who cannot theorize legitimately – it is nothing less than a tool of mass persecution.