Social Economics: An Alternative Theory, vol. 1, Building Anew on Marshall's Principles.

• Author: Larson, Bruce

Neva Goodwin has produced a book which is addressed to economists, and to non-economists who are interested in the methodology of the social sciences |p. xv~. The reader is told that "Our subject is economics" and is asked to "consider the possibility that neoclassical and Marxian economics--the two dominant systems for pursuing this subject--do not exhaust the possibilities of the field" |p. 3~. This possibility being taken as an actuality, Goodwin takes on the task of "assembling a new, or newly put-together, system of economic theory to cover some of the space within the potential field of economic study that is at present inadequately filled. This newly defined system of theory . . . will be called Social Economics" |p. 4~. The present book is "an introduction to social economics; a fuller development of the subject will require time, effort, and exposition by many hands comparable to that which has been afforded to the neoclassical and Marxian systems" |p. 21~. Indeed, Goodwin refers |p. 23~ to a future Volume 2 of Social Economics.

One can only sympathize with Goodwin's wish for a more complete exploration of such issues as coercion, values, the use of assumptions, identity, autonomy and control, technology, altruism, institutions, and global economics |pp. 22-24~. In fact, many of these issues are the bread-and-butter of institutional economics, as can be seen from an examination of Allan G. Gruchy, The Reconstruction of Economics (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1987), and Marc Tool, Evolutionary Economics, 2 vols. (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1988). It is puzzling that there is so little reference to the ideas of contemporary institutionalists in Social Economics, for Goodwin expressly says that "My debt to this 'school', as I set forth upon an ambitious attempt to pull together existing and new elements into a newly defined theory, is very great" |p. 112~. When one considers the existence of a thriving, if neither universally appreciated or fully understood, institutional economics, one begins to wonder if there truly is "a need, within the total field of economics, for one or more additional pools of illumination which will cover areas within the whole potential field of economics where neither neoclassical nor the Marxian lamps reach very well" |p. 9~.

Social Economics contains four parts. Part I consists of an introduction to social economics, while Part IV summarizes the challenges which social economics faces...