Institutional economics as social criticism and political philosophy: remarks upon receipt of the Veblen-Commons Award

Journal of Economic Issues, June, 2008 by Rick Tilman

Some institutionalists may not want to merely repeat the litany of value according to Veblen about the "generic ends of life" because they find it abstract and impersonally vague. There is nothing in institutional economics which precludes subscribing to older ethical models. To the contrary, my final homily in this regard is that ethical inquiry in a changing moral landscape can create new ethical codes by using parts of older ethical models, and this may include the morality of ethicists from several philosophical and religious traditions minus, of course, the supernaturalism.

Politics, Philosophy and Potentiality

Most institutionalists are not ignorant, naive, or apathetic regarding politics and social issues. Furthermore, most are philosophically informed enough to espouse a kind of secular humanism. Indeed, with one or two possible exceptions I have never encountered an evolutionary economist who was or considered themselves to be "religious" in any formal or conventional sense. Why?

Although we never denied the potential of the Judeo-Christian tradition for the provision of moral and psychological insights, we did not perceive it as a fully independent variable. Instead, it was most often viewed as a strategy of superstition, institutional rationalization, clerical domination, and, frequently, class subjugation. Thus, if one seeks to achieve a broader understanding of the role of religion, it is an error to separate it from its sociocultural roots and its political consequences.

The intellectual movement(s) of which Dewey, Veblen and Mills were important catalysts is still roiling forward, converging with new, but hopefully congruent currents, and opening up novel lines of cultural and intellectual inquiry. It is our alternative to formal and informal religious belief and practice. In an age when religious fundamentalism, the Roman pontiff and post-Vatican II Catholic teaching, and Mormonism are archaic alternatives, the presence, and persistence, of evolutionary naturalism is to be welcomed.

Philosophically (and cosmologically) we are secular humanists and evolutionary naturalists who are more than skeptical of the existence of God, the immortality of the soul and the meaningfulness of eternal salvation. As Mills put it:

   There is no God's Truth: the only truths are those defined by the
   cultural apparatus. There is no eternal beauty; the only beauty is
   the object created or indicated by some set of cultural workmen.
   There is no absolute good: the only good is the variety of cultural
   values with which one is morally comfortable or morally uneasy. (5)

However, it would be misleading to conclude that we go the full distance to a radical postmodernism that is fully relativistic wherein reality is merely a social construct. We know full well that some values are more rationally defensible than others, and that brute facticity in the natural and social order must always constrain the social construction of reality. In this sense, we are still children of the Enlightenment, albeit critical ones.