Austrian Vices

The debate over the label "Austrian" has sparked up after Pete Leeson listed 10 "Austrian Vices". Both sides of the GMU community of Austrian-sympathetic academics added their thoughts, with comments from Dan Klein (who wants to ditch the label) and Pete Boettke (who doesn't). Following this Stephen Kinsella picked up on a Joe Salerno comment, and the comments section of both blogs have exploded. I suppose that Pete, Pete, Chris and Fred calling their blog "The Austrian Economists" made this all inevitable.

The conflict has raised a pretty fundamental issue in post-revival Austrian Economics, as Salerno says:

Despite their [Boettke and Leeson] protestations to the contrary, their research program is in fundamental conflict with that of many who have long called themselves Austrians--those who still pursue, contra Leeson's preachments, research in capital theory, the socialist calculation etc. So, instead of continually preaching to the rest of us, why not allow water to run its course down hill and adopt another term.

Now that Pete Boettke's mentioned me I feel it's worth adding my (tired) thoughts. I am a "disciple" of his in that he was my dissertation chair, I took every possible course of his, and regard him as the most important direct influence on my career. I won the Don Lavoie prize last year, and participated in the Global Prosperity Initiative throughout my graduate years (doing fieldwork in Liverpool and Bucharest). So far, so Boettke.

Which might make it ironic that my first peer-reviewed article is on methodology, first book project is on transition (i.e. socialist calculation), and I'm currently writing a paper "modifying" Austrian business cycle theory* (i.e. capital theory). My dissertation was subjectivist all the way through, and I quote Mises and Hayek plentifully. Such vice!

But each of these "vices" were heavily influenced, funded, and encouraged by Pete Boettke. So whilst Salerno upholds these traits as virtues (but accepts that Leeson and Boettke avoid them), I'd suggest that it's not so simple. Pete Leeson's initial post was heavily qualified, and Salerno seems mostly offended by the tone - it's the messenger he's challenging not necessarily the message. Therefore it's largely a rhetorical issue, and I'd imagine all sides agree that division of labour is a good thing. Labels can be useful but there's little point having a common voice if there's alternate goals. For those of us who want to put ideas into action, we don't want to have to choose between our tradition and negative association. In some ways the "Austrian" isn't the bone of contention, it's the "economics" part. Our inter-disciplinary nature shouldn't conflict with Pete Leeson's point that we're not philosophers, or historians, we're primarily economists.

I don't think GMU has a chip on it's shoulder about it's "Austrianess". I do believe that it's the best place in the world to be trained as an Austrian Economist, but it is by no means the sole guardian of the Austrian tradition. Why not? Because that tradition is a living, evolving system of thought. And to me this debate comes down to whether you see Austrian Economics as a body of settled truths, or a system of evolving thought - (a point made by guess who)

So as far as I'm concerned,

I'd rather be a good economist (who's an Austrian), than a good "Austrian Economist"

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*In this paper I have a footnote that reads:

“a broad view of Austrian uniqueness” may appear to be an oxymoron, but this uniqueness stems from combining non-neutrality of money; dynamic process; methodological individualism; and heterogeneity of capital. A narrow view of Austrian uniqueness would be to ignore contributions that don’t satisfy all conditions. A broad view would utilise any points of tangency.

Comments

[Steve Miller]

I agree that Leeson's tone is really what caused all the hoopla. Also, I think many/most geezers (anyone older than I am!) resent having this young punk telling others not to get stuck in the same rut that basically most of those geezers are in. And believe me, I just went to the Austrian Scholars Conference a few weeks ago, and most of these geezers really are in a rut, and they know it. But they aren't ready to hear it from someone still in his 20s, even if he does have some insane number of publications (37 journal articles last I checked).

My own view is that we need to keep cranking out more Anthony Evans. But we can't all do methodology, HET, and ABCT all the time. For every Evans we need a few more Stringhams, Powells, etc.