tailieunhanh - Luận án kinh tế - "Human and action" - Chapter 14

XIV. THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF CATALLACTICS 1. The Delimitation of Catallactic Problems have never been any doubts and uncertainties about the scope of economic science. Ever since people have been eager for a systematic study of economics or political economy | Part Four Catallactics Or Economics Of The Market Society XIV THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF CATALLACTICS 1. The Delimitation of Catallactic Problems There have never been any doubts and uncertainties about the scope of economic science. Ever since people have been eager for a systematic study of economics or political economy all have agreed that it is the task of this branch of knowledge to investigate the market phenomena that is the determination of the mutual exchange ratios of the goods and services negotiated on markets their origin in human action and their effects upon later action. The intricacy of a precise definition of the scope of economics does not stem from uncertainty with regard to the orbit of the phenomena to be investigated. It is due to the fact that the attempts to elucidate the phenomena concerned must go beyond the range of the market and of market transactions. In order to conceive the market fully one is forced to study the action of hypothetical isolated individuals on one hand and to contrast the market system with an imaginary socialist commonwealth on the other hand. In studying interpersonal exchange one cannot avoid dealing with autistic exchange. But then it is no longer possible to define neatly the boundaries between the kind of action which is the proper field of economic science in the narrower sense and other action. Economics widens its horizon and turns into a general science of all and every human action into praxeology. The question emerges of how to distinguish precisely within the broader field of general praxeology a narrower orbit of specifically economic problems. The abortive attempts to solve this problem of a precise delimitation of the scope of catallactics have chosen as a criterion either the motives causing action or the goals which action aims at. But the variety and manifoldness of the motives instigating a man s action are without relevance for a comprehensive study of acting. Every action is motivated by the urge