Is economics a science or a religion? Its practitioners like to think of it as akin to the former. The blind faith with which many do so suggests it has become too much like the latter, with potentially dire consequences for the real people the discipline is intended to help.
The idea of economics as religion harks back to at least 2001, when economist Robert Nelson published a book on the subject. Nelson argued that the policy advice economists draw from their theories is never “value-neutral” but foists their values, dressed up to look like objective science, on the rest of us.
Take, for example, free trade. In judging its desirability, economists weigh projected costs and benefits, an approach that superficially seems objective. Yet economists decide what enters the analysis and what gets ignored. Such things as savings in wages or transport lend themselves easily to measurement in monetary terms, while others, such as the social disruption of a community, do not. The mathematical calculations give the analysis a scientific wrapping, even when the content is just an expression of values.
Similar biases influence policy considerations on everything from labor laws to climate change. As Nelson put it, “the priesthood of a modern secular religion of economic progress” has pushed a narrow vision of economic “efficiency,” wholly undeterred by a history of disastrous outcomes.
I would not call economics a religion, although there are certainly illuminating parallels that can be drawn. I would say instead that religions and other normative social phenomena are ideologies whose norms structure power relationships.
To claim that an ideology whose framework is structured by norms with outcomes structured to benefit certain interests over others is positive science is beyond ridiculous unless it is a pure description of the structure, as it is sociology. However, conventional "orthodox" economics represents this not descriptively but normatively, although the noms are often hidden assumptions or disguised as descriptive, e.g., "law-like."
This misrepresentation is due either to sheer ignorance or intended propaganda. This is obvious to most any social scientist or ethicist that is not captured by the illusion or compromised by interest.
For example, Nelson is not writing against economics as a religion of progress. He recognizes it and likes since he thinks it is doing a better job of bringing prosperity than the old-time religions, which kept humanity stuck.
I don't disagree with this overall. Science has been a good thing for humanity and it had to fight against normative ideology for liberation. That fight is still going on.
However, to pretend that scientists are value-free or that objectivity can be isolated from subjectivity is not only naive or disingenuous, it goes against knowledge gained from contemporary cognitive science.
Neoliberal economists, and that includes most conventional economists, need to acknowledge the normative side of the discipline instead of continuing to pretend that they are doing positive science.
But they will not, since neoliberalism is at least as strong an ideology as any religion of the past or present, and as such it is a locus of power that benefits vested interests, a structure from which conventional economists profit, especially the major voices in the field.
So the conclusion is not so much that they are the new high priest as that they are knowing propagandists for vested interests. Or they are being used and don't care to see it.
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