Economics: From the Dismal Science to the Moral Science: The Moral Economics of Kendall P. Cochran Page: 22

                                
Moral Economics
of the economist is to explain that secondary or derivative
mechanism.
But what happens if the economy is a product of
institutional, historical, technological, social forces and not the
product of natural forces or the unseen hand of divine origin? Then
it is my contention that the economist has a moral responsibility to
help society see where it might go and understand what its
alternatives are.
In summary, the one position, the traditional position, leads
to an acceptance, perhaps even a defense, of the status quo. The
other leads to an argument for social change and for political and
institutional reform.
This is the moral dilemma facing economists today, and it
truly is a dilemma. It is the direction in which John Kenneth
Galbraith, for example, is rapidly moving. (See Galbraith, 1973
especially, but also 1958 and 1971)And it is for this very reason
that the "traditional" economists have rejected the Galbraithian
position and, in fact, circulated a petition to keep him from being
elected president of the AEA. He was, in short, meddling with the
wonders of the market and trying to inflict his point of view on
society. And correctly so. For it is my contention that if
Contemporary Economics is to succeed as a meaningful science
that is, meaningful in terms of the pressing social (political)
economic issues of the day-then the economist must come out of
his ivory tower and bring to play his expertise, his specialized
knowledge, to make the system work better. And what this means
explicitly is that the economist must abandon the traditional
position that he should not make moral or value judgments;
instead, he should not only make them explicitly, but he should
actively urge their implementation.
In order to illustrate the moral assumptions involved, let us
briefly examine three specific cases: (1) public versus private
claims on the productive capacity of the economy; (2) the setting
of prices; (3) the distribution of income.
As a morally involved Economist, I would argue that
society ought to have first choice about what is to be produced.
That is to say, social forces ought to dictate first what is to be
produced and who is to get it, and then the private sector of the
market should distribute what is left.

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