Intellectuals and Libertarianism: Thomas Sowell and Robert Nisbet
Mar 7th, 2014
In Knowledge and Decisions (1980), Thomas Sowell claims that “the delegation of decision making to ‘experts’ [has] become the central feature…of the intellectual’s vision of political and social decision-making.” Economists and other social scientists often portray themselves as disinterested advisors--as efficiency experts, in effect--whose advice should be heeded by those in positions of political power.
Why have people been willing to surrender so much power to economists, sociologists, psychologists, educators, and other self-proclaimed experts in the realm of human action? Sowell has some interesting observations on this topic.
It has seldom been because of any demonstrated success. Crime rates have soared as the theories of criminologists were put into practice; educational test scores have plummeted as new educational theories were tried. Indeed, no small part of the intellectual’s achievement has been in keeping empirical verification off the agenda. Moreover, those who are more essentially intellectual in occupation--primarily producers of ideas--have been both more avid and more favored in power terms than those who produce tangible benefits in verifiable form. It is not the agronomists, physicians, or engineers who have risen to power, but the sociologists, psychologists, and legal theorists. It is the latter group who have transformed the political and social landscape in the United States and much of the Western world. Not only is much of their cognitive output inherently unverifiable empirically; they have by various definitions and axiomatic procedures made their output even less susceptible of authentication than it would be otherwise. The jargon alone in these fields makes their substance largely inaccessible to outsiders. Transitionism explains away all disastrous consequences as the short-run price for long-run triumph. They have conquered by faith rather than works. This is hardly surprising in the light of similar achievements by religious intellectuals who preceded them by centuries. Whatever has made human beings eager to hear those who claim to know the future has worked for modern as well as ancient intellectuals.
Social science experts, according to Sowell, are the modern, secular equivalents of a priestly class, but with this difference: Social scientists, riding on the prestige of the physical (or “hard”) sciences, claim to render objective judgments, free from personal bias or values, about what will promote the good of society or, sometimes, humanity as a whole. Intellectuals who associate with governments typically pride themselves on their objectivity, especially when opposing what they characterize as special interest groups. But such intellectuals have merely hidden their personal values under the mantle of science; in truth, they are just another special interest group with a political agenda.
The late Robert Nisbet (a prominent American sociologist who, though usually called a “conservative,” had strong libertarian tendencies) had some rather harsh things to say about his colleagues who disguised their political values as objective science, and who sought to ensconce themselves in positions of power.
In 1982, Nisbet published a terse commentary (in his book Prejudices) on the social sciences and their role in modern American society. Economics, long considered the most successful of the social sciences, was raised to a near-aristocratic level in the late 1930s, owing to the tremendous influence of John Maynard Keynes. It was in the 1950s, however, when economics achieved the prestigious reputation of an exact mathematical science, that the services of professional economists were eagerly sought by politicians.
By the late 1950s social sciences other than economics also enjoyed tremendous prestige, and money rolled in from both governmental and private sources (such as the Ford Foundation) with billions in assets.
Other foundations rallied, and by the middle of the 1950s, it was a rare social scientist of quality who did not have the perquisites of status that physical scientists had known from the beginning of World War II. Research institutes mushroomed in the social sciences; offices became ever more luxurious, their occupants ever more engaged in research, consultation, government advising, travel from conference to conference all over the world--in just about everything but the teaching of undergraduates, a responsibility increasingly turned over to graduate students and technicians.
The prestige of some social sciences began to decline precipitously in the 1960s, reaching a low point in the following decade.
By 1970, what a sociologist, political scientist, social psychologist, or anthropologist said on any subject whatever was, for the American people generally, a matter of no consequence. The credibility they had enjoyed for nearly two decades after World War II was in tatters, their numbers depleted, and their capital assets nearly gone. Now that economics has joined them, the drama is over, the rise and fall of the social sciences complete.
Why had the public prestige of the social sciences suffered a dramatic setback by 1982, the year Nisbet published his comments? Social scientists, Nisbet points out, typically gave three standard--and self-serving--reasons.
First, social scientists complained of insufficient funds. To this Nisbet replies that abundant funds have never been a condition of progress throughout the history of the physical sciences.
Second, we were told that the social sciences, unlike the physical sciences, are still in their infancy, so we must forgive their many mistakes. To this Nisbet retorts that the social sciences are not new at all, but originated (like the physical sciences) in ancient Greece.
Third, social scientists typically excused their blunders by pointing to the complexity of social data. To this Nisbet points out that that physical scientists also confront highly complex phenomena, but they have progressively succeeded in overcoming this obstacle.
From Libertarianism.org, here.