Social Science and the Political Trend

SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE POLITICAL TREND FRANK H. KNLGHT T HIS is not a "political" discussion. Our concern is solely with the study of political phenomena, the possibility of -knowledge and understanding, and incidentally, the prospect that knowledge may result in changing and improving the phenomena themselves . No criticism, or even critique, of any political personage or method or act is to be read into the argument . To say this emphatically at the outset is in order because to talk about political phenomena at all, even with a purely descriptive intent, one has to use terms which have what the late Professor Veblen called "honorifid ' implications (and this includes the "dishonorific"). But the question whether men as scientists can understand the behaviour of men as statesmen and ci tizens is closely connected with the question how far the latter's behaviour is itself of an intelligen t or understanding sort; and such issues are hard to discuss in purely descriptive terms. Even before the current political trends, which have become increasingly noticeable since the Great War, a number of writers had been questioning how far political activity could be described as consciously intelligent behaviour. The mention of such names as Sorel and Pareto, Cooley, Wallas, and Levy-Bruhl, is sufficient to emphasize the point, to say nothing of the interpretations of human nature derived from psychopathology. The methodological con troversy in economics of the past quarter-century or so looks in the same direction. The rationalistic assumptions of the older classical economics have been under fire, and the type of analysis based 40 7 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY upon them has been yielding ground to other "approaches ." II On the nature of the current political trend, most of what can be said with confidence is negative. It is something different, change, revolution, a break-down of the old system and of the theory and ideology on which it rested. In particular, it is irrationalistic, romantic, away from thinking, toward action. Well before the War, this tendency was manifest in the declining faith in parliamentarism. Then came the War,. with its inevitable regimentation of economic and social life, followed by a brief liberal reaction, and then by the depression, which more and more has come to be seen as a break-down of the old order on its economic side. Either economic science failed to find the cause and prescribe a cure or· poli tical leadership failed to discern in the babel of claims the true economic science, and to follow its behests. In any case, we have seen a discrediting and discarding of old economic and political p.oints of view and axioms, and the rise of a new type of leadership which contrasts strangely with old norms. It does not claim to know, or make its appeal on grounds of knowledge or reason, but rather advocates action as such, the following of an emotional direction or frank experimentation. The latest main episodes in a change going on all over the world of European liberal civilization are the "New Deals" in Germany and the United States. They use different catchwords, but are variants of the same theme. The German "Leader" is perhaps more frank in his call to his people to "think with their blood;" but the American pose of experimentalism is at bottom the same 408 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE POLITICAL TREND thing, the appeal to follow leadership-of the appealer; the cry is "All pull together," meaning "Follow me" (and don't ask critical questions). And the public likes it. The whole West-European social mind is tired of thinking and of argument which seems to lead nowhere, and responds with enthusiasm to the confident proposal to do something about it. The meaning of action, again, is familiar enough; the keynote is to "crack down" on somebody, to make the protestant and non-conformer "feel the full weight of public disapproval." The social science on which the present adult generation was brought up much exaggerated, it would seem, the distance western society had travelled from "primitive" African political ideas with the witch-hunt as the correct procedure for dealing with any public crisis. As to experimenting with...