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Theoretical and Applied Economics
No. 10 / 2011 (563)

The Ideological Reductionism

„To deny Economics its collaboration with ideologies would transform it into an alchemical recipe for wealth, a science of the private laboratory where light doesn't come on because it would compromise the fertility of darkness.”

The most controversial form of parsimony - as an expression of postmodern neo-reductionism - is the construction of analyses in the self-sufficiency of mainstream theory hypotheses. The extension of the scientific community which practices the ideas of this theory, whichever it may be and whenever it would have found itself in a leading position, was an exaggeration through both references (favorable or not) as well as through the flux of approaches which configure economic policies. Methodological conventionalism produces simplification, but when it stems from a single theory it reaches excessive forms.

This is not about the fact that a theory occupies the epicenter of conceptualization in Economics, but also about the fact that the alternatives are being pushed to the periphery in their function of contradicting the truth made absolute through partisanship. The referential uniformization unravels the rational counter-argument in this situation. Ideology is insinuated in the path of the deductive discourse. Its social reflex is totalitarian.

An almost immanent trend in Economics, ideological contamination has multiple resources. It seems though that there are only two important ones: the first, the pride of applying the solutions of an analysis in order to recognize its practical validity, the second, the dependence of institutionalized structures of research on politically aligned funding. It is in fact the obverse and reverse of the same coin, human nature, whose circulation is on the highways of human condition (labor, work, action) in a transactional form. The theoretical economist seeking notoriety at any price - including the moral one - and the societal system based on the rationality of the market, especially in regard to public election, are parts of the same mechanism of compromise preferred by ideologies.

At the intersection between the theoretical economist's interest for access to the official logistics of political institutions (for the promotion and daily experiencing of notoriety) and the interest of the systems of power in the scientific cautioning of their line of conduct, there can be found the ideological conversion of the rational process.

The functioning of this convection has an historical character and it assumes paroxysmic values in the eras in which the preference for perfectly uni-dimensioned societal theories is manifested. The textbook example of the socialist experiment is not the only one, while unfortunately not being the first or the last.

Societal constructions following a single leading criterion, applied invariably to the configuration of the functional structure and to the context of randamental over-determination of the management of powers, find in the theory of corporatist capitalism, for instance, a kymographic update. Economic research focuses strictly on the nuances of this theoretical perspective, emerged from the latest ideological parsimony, searching for the short path of imposed notoriety. The entire architecture of confirming the results of economic cognition conspire towards the trend of encouraging research inspired by the objectives of this societal theory. In order to count, symptomatically put, there is only the path of conforming to the trend, leading many to act accordingly.

The problem of whether this problem can be circumvented remains nebulous, with no correct solutions recognized to date anyway. It is true that the specificity of the cognitive process cannot be defined too exactly, the reflexiveness of the fundamental process is inextricable, the rational cannot be radically separated from the emotional in judging the causes and the individual ends. There cannot be practiced a knowledge which is permanently separated from the emotionally conditioned reflexes of subjectivity, and even harder to do it when separated from the reflexes of transactional inter-subjectivity with regard to roles and statuses.

A sort of Promethean curse can be observed here, economic research forever remaining chained to the hard rock of ideological reductionism. Frankly, Economics cannot escape the pressure of its times. Its scientificity arrives on a special path, most of it trodden by the soles of political interests. From this point of view the name of Political Economics given to the science of the economy is logically constructed.

The degree of scientificity pertains to a double measure: the realism of the problem to which solutions are proposed and the wealth effect generated by the solving process. When dealing with problems whose solutions imply effects of a different consistency, even though it seems that the scientific position is betrayed, the relevance of the propagated consequences must be evaluated from sociological and politological perspectives. In a systemic way all social sciences compete in understanding the anthropical universe.

Somewhat unusual to prior experience, there is no need for the use of the limited randamental sense of the cognitive contribution of Economics in order to conserve its quality as a science. When compared to the alignments of the human condition, the rationality function of Economics is evaluated in the substantial terms specific to labor, work and action, meaning that efficiency is concretely measured. In this territory Economics is experimental, while its phenomenology is praxeological.

It is a different story for the senses of cognitive effects when Economics operates in the fluid universe of human nature, where the rationality function targets the categories of understanding and explanation, is imbued with abstraction and is associated with the other forms of knowledge in the complexity of the social - forms either interested in the palpable truth, in the recipes for the control of power or in the plurivalent motivation of human behaviors. To deny Economics its collaboration with ideologies would transform it into an alchemical recipe for wealth, a science of the private laboratory where light doesn't come on because it would compromise the fertility of darkness.

The only vocation which must always be re-confirmed is for Economics to glimpse the alternative sources of light. It will remain fully within the robe of science as long as it makes visible the ideological simplification of reality and does not restrict access to the diversity of the means for constructing the randamental function. It must, at the same time, show the path on which wealth remains the prosperity-generating source tested in accordance with the law of large numbers.

Any theory which temporary structures the operational mechanisms of the compo¬nents of the human condition holds an episodic meaning, the infinite series of randamental facts being composed by the sub-series of antithetical performances of the human nature.


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The Ideological Reductionism
Marin Dinu

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