Murray Rothbard argued persuasively against the Whig theory of history (1, 2, 3), and of intellectual history, in which events or ideas are portrayed as steadily and consistently improving with little room for detours, controversy, and backtracking. Peter Temin, the distinguished MIT economic historian, also worries that modern economics has become too Whiggish. He has written a brief account of the rise and fall of the economic history field at MIT that I found interesting, though targeted mainly toward insiders. Consider this critique of Daron Acemoglu and James’s Robinson’s 2012 book Why Nations Fail, which has generally been favorably received within Austrian circles:
This is a deservedly successful popular book, making a simple and strong point that the authors made originally at the professional level over a decade before (Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, 2001). They assert that countries can be “ruled by a narrow elite that have [sic] organized society for their own benefit at the expense of the vast mass of people” or can have “a revolution that transformed the politics and thus the economics of the nation … to expand their economic opportunities (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012, pp. 3-4).”
The book is not however good economic history. It is an example of Whig history in which good policies make for progress and bad policies preclude it. Only transitions from bad to good are considered in this colorful but still monotonic story. The clear implication is that if countries can copy the policies of English-speaking countries, they will prosper. No consideration is given to Britain’s economic problems over the past half-century or of Australia’s relative decline for a century.
The book takes a shotgun approach to economic history, and many of the pellets go astray. In the areas I know about, their interpretations are out of date and misleading.
The essay unfortunately lapses into Krugmanesque, sophomoric gibes about austerity and Bush-Gore and Citizens United. But the central point that contemporary neoclassical economists, even clever ones like Acemoglu and Robinson, are weak on economic history, and that this results from phasing out the field from the graduate program, is worth reflection. Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard were careful historians as well as theorists, and their students and followers like Ron Hamowy and Bob Higgs have continued this tradition. Like Temin, I hope that economic history and the history of economic thought continue to be part of the core training for Austrian economists.
