Economists’ claim to transcendent knowledge collapses when they enter governance

Evidence

In her essay “What Is Authority?” the twentiethcentury political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote: “Th e search for the best form of government reveals itself to be the search for the best government for philosophers”— the people doing the search— “which turns out to be the governments in which philosophers have become the rulers of the city” (Arendt 1961, 114). For austere economic experts imposing their wills on transitional economies since the 1920s, the process is very much the same: at the very moment their supposedly pure knowledge of transcendent economic ideas is applied to governing the real world, it quickly becomes clear that economic ideas are not really transcendent aft er all. While these economists may refute the suggestion of an agenda in these moments, their keenly political interventions reveal them, no matter how they may want the story to be told, as inescapably party to a struggle to preserve capital order— seemingly the only form of social order they can conceive of. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1597

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The point that expert claims to neutral technical knowledge reveal themselves as political once economists enter government — the Arendt framework illuminates the ideological self-deception of technocratic austerity.
• DEFINE: Uses Arendt to define how austerity expertise functions as a disguise for class politics — the ‘philosopher-kings’ claim as ruling ideology.
• XREF: connects to: Economic ideas can blind policymakers to the flaws of their institutional designs — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 252; Computers and elite economists both claimed to produce knowledge beyond politics. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 539; Economists obscuring knowledge during crisis stems from contradicting logics of expertise and market faith — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 655 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Economics is lateral to governing, not its internal rationality #corroborates (0.85) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 1467
• Economics has replaced politics as the governing science of the state #contradicts (0.80) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 154
• Correcting homo oeconomicus’s falsity leaves the governance question untouched #expands (0.75) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 204
• Neoliberal governance reshapes scholarship to serve economic usefulness #complicates (0.70) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 626