[1032] Of dismal science: it mocks liberalism, not economics

I managed to finish up a book on new year’s eve. It might be an odd way to celebrate the eve to you yappies but I am not to blame for that. Eid fell on Sunday and so, though I had the free will not to, I decided to tag along with my family to visit my grandma in Malacca.

Finishing up a book on new year’s eve allowed me to start reading a new one on January 1 itself. I bought three new titles into my collection earlier; of the three, I decided to start with Beinhocker’s The Origin of Wealth. Initially, I thought it would be dry but the first chapter truly attracts me. It starts with a history of economics.

This is what I learn from the first chapter: economics is called a dismal science by Peter Carlyle not because the discipline is all about doom and gloom. Specifically, as it is commonly thought, the term was a reaction to Malthusian theory which suggests that with exponential population growth vis-à-vis geometric food production growth, population would collapse sooner or later.

As mentioned in the notes of The Origin of Wealth, the term “dismal science” was coined by Carlyle in his work, Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question, to mock the “alliance of economists and abolitionists”. Carlyle was a proponent of slavery while liberal economists were standing on the other side of the river, fighting for abolition of slavery. It really has nothing to do about economics having a pessimistic worldview.

On Wikipedia:

Developing a deliberately paradoxical position, Carlyle argued that slavery was actually morally superior to the market forces of supply and demand promoted by economists, since, in his view, the freeing up of the labor market by the liberation of slaves had actually led to a moral and economic decline in the lives of the former slaves themselves.

So, next time, be careful on how you use the term “dismal science”. It might not mean what you meant within the original context it was used.