PHILOSOPHY

Bunge / SOCIAL
OFSCIENCE
THE SOCIAL
ACCORDING
SCIENCESTO
/ September
VAN DEN 2001
BERG
Systems and Emergence, Rationality
and Imprecision, Free-Wheeling and
Evidence, Science and Ideology
Social Science and Its Philosophy
According to van den Berg

MARIO BUNGE
McGill University

I am grateful to Axel van den Berg (2001) for having reviewed gen-
erously and lively, as well as at great length, my book Social Science
under Debate (henceforth SSUD) (Bunge 1998). But, while he has
praised the originality and breadth of this work, my critic has also
complained that it taught him nothing new, and that in matters of fact
I have asked my readers to take me at my word. Since these criticisms
suggest that I have failed to make certain points clearly or explicitly
enough, allow me to clarify a few of them. I will class the points in
question into three groups: philosophical puzzles, matters of social
theory, and matters of fact.

PHILOSOPHICAL PUZZLES

Let us take a quick look at the two keys to the approach I have
dubbed “systemism” and that I claim to be the viable alternative to
both individualism and holism. Those keys are the concepts of system
and emergence. van den Berg states that I am an individualist after all,
since I view culture as “real-life individuals who . . . produce, con-
sume or diffuse cultural goods.” But this quotation from p. 224 of my
SSUD is truncated. The original does not characterize culture as
“individuals,” if only because this would be grammatically incorrect.
Instead, it characterizes culture as a concrete system composed of indi-
viduals who carry out certain specific activities (such as doing sociol-

I thank Carlos and Lilian Alurralde, Michael Brecher, Dorval Brunelle, Arturo
O’Connell, and Alberto Robilotta for useful information and remarks.
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol. 31 No. 3, September 2001 404-423
© 2001 Sage Publications
404
 Bunge / SOCIAL SCIENCE ACCORDING TO VAN DEN BERG 405

ogy) and who are held together by certain peculiar bonds (such as
exchanging sociological problems, findings, and gossip).
Composition is not everything in a system: structure is equally
important. Examples are steam, liquid water, and ice, which have the
same composition—likewise the chemical isomers, such as AGCT
and GATC, and the words god and dog. Again, although a family, a
charity, a business firm, and a government department are composed
of people, they constitute systems with very different global emer-
gent properties. If these are overlooked, then the actions of their indi-
vidual components will not be adequately understood. All the more
so since one and the same individual is likely to belong to different
systems, in every one of which he is bound to enact different roles—
for example, as mater familias, volunteer worker, businesswoman, or
public servant. Only crowds are structureless.
Another example is that most macroeconomists, from François
Quesnay (of tableau économique fame) to John Maynard Keynes (the
father of modern macroeconomics) to Wassily Leontief (the inventor
of input-output matrices) have regarded the economy as a system.
Keynes ([1936] 1973, xxxii) said it explicitly: “I am chiefly concerned
with the behaviour of the economic system, as a whole.” Even
Thomas C. Schelling (1978, 50), a well-known enthusiast of rational-
choice theory, notes that “what we typically deal with in economics,
as in much of the social sciences, is a feedback system. And the feed-
back system ‘loop’ is typically one of these relations that hold no mat-
ter how people behave.” (Note this beautiful illustration of emer-
gence, on which more appears below.) In particular, the theory of
general equilibrium regards the market as a whole that, unlike the
households and firms that compose it, is said to be in equilibrium and
to run itself—surely two emergent if elusive properties.
True, some economists, particularly von Mises, Hayek, and the
members of the now defunct rational-expectations school, have
claimed that microeconomics—which focuses on individuals, not
systems—suffices to account for the entire economy. But most busi-
nessmen know that the micro and the macro levels are qualitatively
different. They also know that microeconomic transactions cannot be
understood in a macroeconomic vacuum—that is, ignoring such mac-
roeconomic and political variables as the going discount rate, the bal-
ance of payments, the restrictions (or lack thereof) on international
trade, the rate of unemployment, and political instability. And
uncounted social psychologists and sociologists have shown that
individual behavior depends critically on the agent’s place in social
406 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / September 2001

networks. Why, then, the obstinacy of most rational-choice theorists

in denying the very existence of social systems? And why their failure
to answer the charge that real people do not follow the dictates of
rational-choice theory? (See pros and cons in, e.g., Hogarth and Reder
1987.)
Not surprisingly for someone who is doubtful about the centrality
of systems, van den Berg questions the reality of emergence: “The
question is whether such emergent properties actually exist.” This
doubt betrays either of two beliefs: that there are no systems, but only
collections of individuals; or that emergence is just a synonym for our
(present) ignorance of the interactions among the system’s compo-
nents. I submit that, though widespread, both beliefs are false.
Indeed, except for elementary particle physics, all the sciences and
technologies, whether formal or factual, deal with systems. Think of
languages (as distinct from their vocabularies) and logical arguments
(as distinct from unstructured sets of propositions); of number sys-
tems, systems of equations, and hypothetico-deductive systems
(i.e., theories); of atoms and crystals, cells and organs; of the musculo-
skeletal, cardiovascular, digestive, and nervous systems; of whole
organisms and ecosystems; or think of machines and social artifacts,
such as universities and business firms, armies and mafias, govern-
ments and nations. It is systems all the way: everything is either a sys-
tem or a component of one. Hence individualism, whether ontologi-
cal, methodological, or other, holds nowhere: neither in mathematics,
nor factual science, nor technology (Bunge 2000a, 2000b).
As for emergence, every system has properties that its components
lack: this is the ontological concept of emergence. This word is due to
George Lewes (1875), polymath and George Eliot’s companion (see
Blitz 1992). For example, logical validity can only be a property of
arguments, and internal consistency one of theories; area is a property
of closed figures, not of their perimeters; ionization energy is a prop-
erty of atoms, and dissociation energy one of molecules; temperature
and viscosity are properties of extended bodies, not of their atomic
constituents; metabolism and mitosis are features of cells; individual
neurons can detect, but neither perceive nor think: only large systems
of neurons can do that; social order, political stability, and national
development are properties of whole societies; so are capitalism, the
rule of law, and the welfare state. Besides, all systems have universal
emergent properties, such as those of having arisen from assembly
processes, and being capable of crumbling as a result of either internal
conflicts or environmental shocks.
 Bunge / SOCIAL SCIENCE ACCORDING TO VAN DEN BERG 407

Systemicity, and the emergence that comes with it, is so deep-

seated that it is characteristic of quantum-mechanical things, not only
of macrophysical ones. This is what nonlocality (and the consequent
nonseparability) is all about, as it has been known since Alain Aspect’s
sensational experiment in 1981. Indeed, quantum mechanics involves
that, as I like to put it, once a system, always a system—even after the
spatial separation of the constituents (see, e.g., Bunge 1985a, Ballentine
1988). If such distant correlations exist in microphysical systems, why
doubt the existence of social systems held together by bonds both vol-
untary and involuntary, some at close range (as in face-to-face interac-
tions) and others at long range (as in the www and international
relations)?
Remember Leo Tolstoy’s vivid description, in War and Peace, of the
quick dispersal of Napoleon’s army upon entering Moscow: its trans-
formation from a disciplined corps into a ragtag of demoralized
marauders acting on their own and on the rule sauve qui peut. Tolstoy,
who had fought in two wars, knew that an army is not the same as the
collection or amalgamation of its constituents. What distinguishes a
regular army from any other collection of individuals is the posses-
sion of such systemic properties as hierarchy, command chains, spe-
cific missions such as overcoming the enemy forces, and special
resources such as the public treasury and the license to commandeer
the locals’ property. All of these features submerge on demobiliza-
tion—submergence being of course the dual of emergence.
The problem is not whether emergent properties exist, for to deny
them implies inter alia that it does not matter whether one is alive or
has been reduced to a handful of ashes. As James S. Coleman (1964)—
whom both van den Berg and I admire—stated long ago, the problem
is rather to find out “emergent group-level” regularities from individ-
ual regularities. And those macrosocial regularities originate in social
interactions. For example, “the market price is an emergent property of
the system that arises from the pair-wise interactions [among the
actors]” (Coleman 1990, 28, emphasis added). By the way, in his letter
to me of 10 January 1990, Coleman admitted that he was a “closet
systemist,” since he “pretty much agreed” with my discussion of
bottom-up, top-down, and mixed definitions and explanations in
social science.
Even such a lifelong methodological individualist as Kenneth
Arrow (1994) has ended up by admitting, nay emphasizing, the exis-
tence of “irreducibly social” properties. Think of capitalism, business
cycles, the division of labor, the invisible hand, class structure, income
408 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / September 2001

distribution, the states of peace and war, political stability, or social

cohesion. All of these are emergent properties of social systems.
No doubt some of these, such as social cohesion and the Gini index
of income distribution, can be explained in individual terms. Social
structure can be elucidated in terms of individuals and the ties among
them (see, e.g., Bunge 1974). Social cohesion can be explained in terms
of the participation of individuals in different social systems (García-
Sucre and Bunge 1976). Voluntary migrations can be explained in
terms of individual enticements and interstate barriers (see, e.g.,
Bunge 1969). And all the social indicators are constructed out of data
about individuals (see, e.g., Bunge 1975, 1981).
But explained emergence is still emergence. In other words,
whether or not a radically new property arises is an objective feature
of the things concerned. The same holds for submergence, or the loss
of properties, as in divorce and bankruptcy. Gains and losses of prop-
erties are for real regardless of our ability to explain them. This is why
the general concepts of emergence and submergence belong in ontol-
ogy, whereas that of the explanation belongs in epistemology. (See
Piaget [1965] for a similar view on the objectivity of emergence.)
Surely one of the most challenging tasks for a social scientist is to
account for particular cases of either, such as the emergence of social
inventions and the obsolescence of institutions. But he will not even
attempt to embark on such investigation if he is wedded to method-
ological individualism.

MATTERS OF SOCIAL THEORY

My critic admonishes me to take seriously the theories I criticize, in

particular the rational-choice theories. But I do! For example, I devote
an entire chapter (pp. 359-87) of Finding Philosophy in Social Science
(FPSS) (Bunge 1996) to these theories. And I take Coleman’s “linear
system of action” so seriously that I organize it axiomatically (SSUD,
79-80) and examine critically every one of its seven postulates—
which is more than Coleman himself did. I conclude that the postu-
lates are false, on top of which the theory is static and lacking in
empirical support. I also note that the theory includes a whole,
namely, the market, which Coleman does not analyze in individualist
terms. Worse, he assumes the actors to interact via that whole rather
than face-to-face—an assumption that goes against the grain of meth-
 Bunge / SOCIAL SCIENCE ACCORDING TO VAN DEN BERG 409

odological individualism. This is why I call Coleman’s stand in this

particular case “individholistic.”
Moreover, until some two decades ago I was enthusiastic over the
rational-choice approach, particularly because it has all the trappings
of exactness—a feature irresistible to the founder of the Society for
Exact Philosophy. For example, I discussed utility theory in my Scien-
tific Research (1967); I published several articles in Theory and Decision
over two decades and have been a member of its advisory editorial
board nearly since its inception three decades ago. I even published a
mathematical decision-theoretic model of an Argentinian electoral
dilemma (Bunge 1972) and another of the American war in Vietnam
(Bunge 1973). Been there, done that.
My faith in rational-choice theory was only shaken upon reading
the criticisms by the late John Blatt (1983), a distinguished nuclear
physicist turned economist. And I learned only recently that, as far
back as in 1838, the polymath Antoine Augustin Cournot had rejected
as unscientific “the utilities that everyone estimates in his own way.”
Nor did I know at the time that Henri Poincaré, in a letter of 1901 to
Léon Walras, had criticized his use of undefined utility functions. He
was right: an undefined symbol cannot designate a mathematical
object. Furthermore, it is unrealistic to handle goods of different kinds
as if they were mutually independent. Hence, attempting to maxi-
mize the gain in one of them is bound to affect the gain in others, to the
point of minimizing it, as in the cases of the pairs product quality–
price and income–leisure time.
Nor is subjective utility the only wobbly pillar of most rational-
choice models. Another is their indiscriminate use of subjective prob-
abilities, which are those occurring in careless statements such as
“The probability of crossing this street safely is 0.95” and “The proba-
bility of getting this paper accepted is 0.33.” Indeed, one of the
assumptions of rational-choice theory is that all events can be
assigned subjective probabilities, and that rational people can evalu-
ate them correctly. (In line with his fictionist epistemology, Milton
Friedman [1970, 1991] was slightly more cautious: he stated that we
may assume that agents act as if they assigned a probability to every
event. Which is like assuming that the Earth moves as if the sun turned
around it.)
The assumption that every event has a probability that a rational
agent can estimate is false. Indeed, pure randomness, with no causal
admixture, does not even exist in the quantum realm (see Bunge
410 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / September 2001

1959). And the empirical investigations of Tversky and Kahneman

(1974) have shown that even experienced research psychologists can
have serious misconceptions about chance and statistics. For exam-
ple, they tend to overrate small probabilities and underrate large
ones, they tend to incur sampling errors (selecting samples of inade-
quate size), and they may even commit the gambler’s fallacy. Why
believe that rational-choice theorists are more competent to eyeball
correct probability values? And, more fundamentally, why keep con-
fusing the mathematical probability of a random event with the quali-
tative likelihood or expectation of a fact (whether random or not) and
the plausibility of a hypothesis?
In sum, there is no justification for assigning a probability, whether
objective or subjective, to every event. Only chance events, such as
random walk, thermal noise, radioactive disintegration, and
nonsystematic experimental error, can be assigned probabilities—
and even so provided there is a theoretical or empirical reason to do so
(see Bunge 1988). But it so happens that most social facts are not
chance events—particularly if they are outcomes of deliberate
actions. It is only when a competent student of social facts picks up at
random an event (or a sample of events) out of a large mass of events
of the same kind, such as suicides or bankruptcies, on which he can
use probability theory. In so doing he injects probability into a non-
probabilistic mass of facts. Even so, his probability is expected to be
objective and therefore corrigible rather than an arbitrary personal
estimate. Ask an actuary how insurance premiums are periodically
recalculated on the basis of updated objective accident and mortality
frequencies.
My main objection to the entire family of rational-choice models
can now be stated succinctly as follows. The utility functions, when
undefined, are just squiggles on paper; and when defined, those func-
tions are not supported by any empirical evidence. And the accompa-
nying probabilities are almost always taken out of a hat; moreover,
they are not pertinent anyway, because the social events concerned,
though perhaps uncertain, are seldom random—as they ought to be
for a legitimate application of probability theory. In short, I have
argued at some length, both in FPSS and in SSUD, that the rational-
choice models are conceptually fuzzy, empirically groundless, or
both. In neither case do they qualify as being scientific.
The preceding conclusion is reinforced upon evaluating the failure
of rational-choice models to account for the facts. Think, for instance,
of the rise of capitalism. Did anyone decide to start capitalism, or was
 Bunge / SOCIAL SCIENCE ACCORDING TO VAN DEN BERG 411

this the unanticipated result of a long-drawn process involving a myr-

iad of both rational and arational actors rather than a couple of “play-
ers”? And who decided what in Paris on the eve of 14 July 1789? At the
time, no one proposed to replace the monarchy with a republic—and
most of the leaders arose after that date anyway. Or take game theory,
which is generally regarded as the theory of conflict and cooperation.
How many of the hundreds of existing game-theoretic models have
correctly described, let alone predicted, any international crisis?
None, so far as I know. I submit that two main reasons for the failure of
politological rational-choice models are simplism (in particular the
shrinking of processes into point events) and apriorism—the disre-
gard for empirical data.
By contrast, the International Crisis Behavior Project, initiated in
1975, has studied 412 international crises and 895 foreign policy crises
between 1918 and 1994 (Brecher and Wilkenfeld 2000). The authors of
this study have proposed and checked forty-six general hypotheses
that explain much of the contemporary international scene, as well as
help manage international conflicts. One of these hypotheses reads
thus: “As the prevalence of democracies in a crisis increases, the likeli-
hood of escalation of military hostility decreases.” Note that the state-
ment contains the word likelihood, not probability, and that the concept
of utility (or payoff) is absent from it. Obviously, the authors of the
study know that the concept of probability should not be invoked in
vain. They also know that the payoffs of military confrontations are
hard to estimate and are mostly illusory, whence the game-theoretic
models of international conflicts are just jeux d’esprit.
As for mainstream economic theory, I have castigated it in SSUD
and elsewhere (Bunge 1985b) not only for pivoting around the two
fuzzy concepts in question but also for its remoteness from economic
reality—as shown, for example, by its failure to account for market
disequilibria, stagflation, the frequent coexistence of “economic pros-
perity” with declining incomes, and its notorious inability to make
accurate economic forecasts. Others, far better qualified than I, have
been just as severe. For example, this is how Leontief (1966, 33) evalu-
ated the crown of the rational-choice approach, namely, the theory of
general equilibrium: “Seldom, in modern positive science, has so
elaborate a theoretical structure been erected on so narrow and shal-
low a factual foundation.”
But, instead of countering my criticisms, van den Berg berates
them as “shopworn.” In particular, he does not tackle my statement
that, unlike a “living” science, mainstream economic theory has
412 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / September 2001

hardly changed over more than one century. Indeed, all economics
students know that it was born in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian
War and the Paris Commune (1871). Was it? The learned Joseph
Schumpeter knew better: He singled out as precursors “those brilliant
French engineers” around Jules Dupuit (1804-66), who had flourished
one generation earlier, between 1844 and 1849 (Ekelund and Hébert
1999). Indeed, Dupuit and his colleagues (all of them specialized in
static public works) discovered what has been orthodoxy for the past
130 years, namely, what Marx called the “vulgar school of political
economy.” So, Milton Friedman (1991) was right when he stated that
mainstream economic theory is “old wine in new bottles.” Only, he
did not know that the theory he praised for its longevity had been pro-
posed even before the Communist Manifesto of 1848. (Imagine a
twenty-first-century physicist using the Dalton-Avogadro atomic
theory rather than quantum mechanics.) Nor did it occur to Friedman
that stagnation is a mark of pseudoscience, not of science.
Why are these and many other criticisms still being ignored after
more than a century? You tell us, Professor van den Berg: I suggest
that it behooves sociologists to find out why certain doctrines, such as
decision theory, applied game theory, neoclassical microeconomics,
psychoanalysis, and social Darwinism, persist in the face of cogent
criticism. And it behooves the historian of ideas to discover why
“game theory, which originally was meant to describe (or prescribe)
rational decisions, has become the major instrument for displaying
the shakiness of the concept of [economic] rationality”—as the game
theorists Karl Sigmund and Martin Nowak (2000) put it.
John Maynard Keynes’s intellectual heir, the late Dame Joan Robin-
son, and her coworker John Eatwell (1974, 35), proposed a sort of
Marxist explanation for the success of the crown of the rational-choice
approach, namely, neoclassical microeconomics: “Fear and horror
aroused by the work of Marx were exacerbated by the impact
throughout Europe of the Paris Commune of 1871. Doctrines which
suggested conflict were no longer desirable. Theories which diverted
attention from the antagonism of social classes met a ready welcome.”
Another Keynesian, Pasinetti (1981, 12-14), concurred. So did
Galbraith (1987, 134): “Orthodox or accepted economic thought is in
keeping with dominant economic interests.”
The institutionalist macroeconomist Alfred S. Eichner (1983) pro-
posed an alternative explanation in his paper on why economics is not
yet a science: “The neoclassical core is the essential glue by which the
economics profession as a social system is held together” (p. 233)—
 Bunge / SOCIAL SCIENCE ACCORDING TO VAN DEN BERG 413

much as the study of the Talmud is the center of a yeshiva. But it may
also be surmised that the theory in question is popular because it pur-
ports to explain much with little, it intimidates the nonmathematical
reader, and it leaves ample freedom to fantasize. However, I do not
profess to know the correct explanation—which is likely to be a com-
bination of the above. I only submit that it is high time some empiri-
cally oriented sociologist or anthropologist investigated this problem
that affects us all, since mainstream economic theory is the root of eco-
nomic policy.
Let us now turn to a theory and philosophy of law criticized in
SSUD: legal positivism, as represented by J. Austin, H. Kelsen, and
H.L.A. Hart. Its central tenets are conformism and formalism: that
might is right, and that the law is a morally and politically neutral
shell, and even a matter of logic. This school is so popular and influen-
tial that one of its best-known living critics has called it “the ruling
theory of law” (Dworkin 1977). van den Berg’s suspicion that my criti-
cism of this school betrays improvisation is unjustified. In fact, I
became acquainted with legal positivism in the early 1940s because it
was, and still is, the subject of spirited debates in Argentina, my home
country.
The Argentinian jurist and philosopher José Juan Bruera (1945)
published a criticism of Kelsen’s version of that philosophy in my
journal Minerva. In his article, he noted that legal positivism is
ahistorical and ignores all the values we live by except for legality. In
particular, it ignores the common good, human rights, equality, jus-
tice, liberty, and peace. As a consequence, it invites “the prostitution
of law.” Shortly thereafter, the famous German jurist Gustav
Radbruch accused legal positivism of having “helped pave the way
for Nazism.” The Canadian scholar David Dyzenhaus (1997, 5) is
slightly more lenient: Kelsen “offered no legal resource which could
be used to resist a fascist seizure of power in Germany.”
However, van den Berg takes me to task for stating (SSUD, 365-66)
that legal positivism, far from being (as Kelsen had claimed) the the-
ory of pure law, untainted by either politics or ethics, is the servant of
the status quo. This explains why it was the official legal philosophy
in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet empire. It is also known that
Carl Schmitt, another prominent legal positivist, was for a while the
leader of the Nazi jurists (Kolnai 1938; Diner and Stolleis 1999). And
we also know that Schmitt, still unrepentant, is a hero of the European
New Right (Eatwell 1995). This should not be surprising, for the
central point of legal positivism is that the jurist must accept the
414 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / September 2001

given: legitimacy equals legality, and justice is what the law of the
land stipulates—whence the concept of an unjust law would be a con-
tradiction in terms. Thus, far from protecting individual rights and
the separation of powers, as van den Berg believes (possibly misled
by the British legal positivist H.L.A. Hart), the school in question
legitimates any legal code, however morally illegitimate. (See Bunge
[1989] for the law-morality-politics triangle.)
Legal positivism is then a feature of political conservatism or
worse. The genuine liberals (and a fortiori the socialists) reject the pro-
cedural view of justice and embrace a substantive view instead (see,
e.g., Rawls 1996). Consequently, they are not conservatives but
reformers: they know that all societies and their legal codes are flawed
and therefore in need of reform. The legal realists, such as the Ameri-
can jurists Roscoe Pound and Julius Stone, and the activist American
justices around 1960, as well as the Scandinavian legal realists, were
genuine liberals and consequently antipositivists. They regarded the
law not just as an instrument of social control, which it is, but also as a
tool of social reform. As a grandson of a liberal Chief Justice and the
son of a progressive parliamentarian, I could not agree more.

MATTERS OF FACT

It is well known that the importance of a theory is gauged by the

number of important problems that it solves as well as by the new
research projects it inspires. It is my contention that many of the
theories examined in SSUD fail this test. In particular, to my knowl-
edge no rational-choice theory has tackled, let alone solved, any
important contemporary social problems, such as those of busi-
ness cycles, chronic unemployment, arms races against nonexisting
enemies, ethnic conflicts, mass production of cultural junk, or
underdevelopment.
This does not seem to worry van den Berg, who punishes me
repeatedly for my remarks on the failure of those models to take facts
seriously. On the other hand, he casts doubts about many of my fac-
tual statements. But he does not refute them, or even quote the sources
of his data. Hence, his readers may be left with the impression that he
is just countering my opinions with his own. Let us take a quick look
at four such bones of contention: the effects of globalization, the
causes of the 1973 oil crisis, the procedural theory of democracy, and
the science-ideology connection.
 Bunge / SOCIAL SCIENCE ACCORDING TO VAN DEN BERG 415

According to van den Berg, my objections to free trade between

unequals (such as the United States and Chile) is a piece of ideology
without empirical support. Allow me to point out that the history of
free trade has a very dark side. For example, in the days of the Raj,
Great Britain imposed free trade on India to ensure the monopoly of the
mills of Manchester and Lancashire at the expense of the Indian textile
cottage industry. Recall also that the United Kingdom waged the
Opium Wars against China to force free trade in opium, a trade that
had been banned by the Chinese government. And let us not forget
the critical role of protectionism in the prosperity of Japan throughout
the twentieth century. Freedom indeed!
During the past two centuries, most economists, as well as the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, have trumpeted
the blessings of free trade, while only a few mavericks (such as Batra
1992) dared criticize it. Still, Mancur Olson, an enthusiastic free-trader
and well-known rational-choice practitioner, chided those apologists
for having grossly underrated the alleged benefits of free trade to a
paltry 1 to 2 percent of the GDP. To prove his point, Olson analyzed
the trade in manufactures, concluding that “the countries that protect
manufactures least, export manufactures most” (1993, 235). But of course
only industrialized countries export manufactured goods wholesale,
and they stand to benefit from free trade because it exploits country
specialization and enshrines reciprocity: I’ll buy your textiles pro-
vided you buy my cars. However, this is not the case for the develop-
ing nations, which trade chronically cheap commodities, such as
natural resources and foodstuff, for increasingly expensive manu-
factured goods. May this not be why the gap between the industrial-
ized countries and the others has been widening over the past half-
century? And is there a better explanation of the fact that the ratio
between the richest 20 percent and the poorest 20 percent of the world
population increased from 30:1 in 1960 to 74:1 in 1997 according to UN
statistics?
Whatever the answer to the preceding questions, one thing is obvi-
ous: Olson’s study is methodologically flawed, because it ignores part
of the evidence as well as the huge difference between equality de jure
and equality de facto. Furthermore, it does not examine critically the
indicators of market openness used by researchers, such as import
tariffs. By contrast, Rodríguez and Rodrik (forthcoming) start their
prime analysis of the growth-openness relation by analyzing the vari-
ous indicators in question. They note that these indicators of market
openness are unreliable because they are “proxies for other policy or
416 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / September 2001

institutional variables that have an independent detrimental effect on

growth.” (High interest rates and strong exchange rates, as well as
political instability, are likely to be among such hidden variables.)
And the same authors conclude that, when the necessary corrections
are performed, no significant association between economic growth
and trade policies appears. Consequently they “dispute . . . the view,
increasingly common, that integration in the world economy is such a
potent force for economic growth that it can effectively substitute for a
development strategy.” Simpler: international trade is beneficial only
as a by-product of national development. If in doubt, remember the
Amerindians who exchanged their gold for mirrors and colored
beads—plus smallpox for good measure.
The Canadian side of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) is a case in point despite the much smaller disparity
between the two northern partners. While it has greatly increased the
volume of trade between Canada and the United States, NAFTA has
also destroyed many Canadian manufactures, enlarged the Canada–
United States gap in both productivity and wages, and made deep
cuts into Canada’s social expenditures (Jackson 2000). Of course the
rightish critic is bound to dismiss any such analysis as a leftist ploy to
divert attention from economic to social policy. But sociologists have
always known that, far from hovering above society, the market is
embedded in it (see, for example, Parsons 1940; Polanyi 1944).
And then there is the matter of income distribution, a question that
can only be disregarded by economists prone to stating with a straight
face that “the economy” is booming even while the people are not
doing too well. In fact, the recent annual reports of the UN Conference
on Trade and Development show that in several countries, both
developing and developed, globalization has been associated with
increasing income inequality. Whether such association manifests an
underlying causal link may be subject to debate. But this is precisely
the methodological point: cross-country statistical correlations are no
substitute for detailed microeconomic and institutional investiga-
tions of the national mechanisms of growth (and decline).
After all, international trade is only one of the growth (or decline)
factors, if only because in most cases its volume is far smaller than the
volume of internal trade (see Ocampo and Taylor 1998). In general,
commerce is less important than production. A subsistence economy
is socially preferable to one in which the cultivation of staple foods is
displaced by cash crops for export, the revenue of which is employed
in buying cigarettes and guns—the classical sub-Saharan African
 Bunge / SOCIAL SCIENCE ACCORDING TO VAN DEN BERG 417

case. And the restriction or even suspension of international trade is

occasionally a good thing, as when the British blockade of Napoleonic
France left the French no resource but to update and expand their
backward manufactures. The effect of the current U.S. blockade on
Cuba is similar: it has led to a flourishing pharmaceutical and biotech-
nological industry.
As I write (October 2000), the finance ministers and central bankers
of the wealthiest nations, together with some of the so-called risk
nations, are meeting in Montreal to discuss the costs and benefits of
free trade. They are doing this with the declared aim of replacing the
ruling Washington consensus (“Open your doors and tighten your
belts”) with the hopeful Montreal consensus (“Liberalize trade and
share prosperity via social programs”). Paul Martin, Canada’s finance
minister, declared at that conference that “globalization, if its benefits
are limited only to a privileged few, is not going to work. It is not fair”
(Globe and Mail, 25 October 2000). If even the finance minister of a G7
nation has moral qualms about the Washington consensus, why is it
wrong for a philosopher to share them? And what is surprising about
an Argentinian objecting to the free-trade policy, seeing that it has
deindustrialized and impoverished his home country during the
1990s?
Our economic and political leaders and their intellectual spokes-
persons keep telling us that globalization is the road to prosperity.
However, they are reticent as regards the empirical evidence for that
assertion, particularly concerning the impact of globalization on the
developing world—where five-sixths of the world population hap-
pen to live. There is a growing body of empirical research, both aca-
demic and commissioned by nongovernmental organizations, indi-
cating that “globalization increases inequality in wealth distribution,
economic insecurity, as well as social marginalization, which in turn
have deleterious effects on the cohesion of societies” (Deblock and
Brunelle 2000, 113). The effects of globalization on the less-developed
countries is devastating because “their democracies are weak, their
economies fragile, and their economic and social rights, precarious”
(Deblock and Brunelle 2000, 114). Remember Mexico (1994), Indone-
sia (1998), and their worldwide sequels. And recall that George Soros
(1998), the financial wizard, has written a scathing indictment of
global capitalism as a threat to the open society.
In SSUD, I suggest what I think is a plausible mechanism to ex-
plain the perverse effects of globalization, namely, this: in any deal-
ings, of any kind, among unequally empowered parties, the more
418 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / September 2001

powerful are likely to have, and make use of, an advantage over the less
powerful—unless the handicaps are taken into account (as in golf),
and a neutral umpire (like the Brussels Eurocracy) is charged with
monitoring the score and correcting for inequalities. Shorter and more
generally: freedom of any kind only works among equals, unless a neutral
power (as the liberal state was supposed to be before it was maimed
by the neoliberal policies) can effectively guarantee it. This is why free
trade has proved beneficial to only few countries, namely, the seats of
transnational corporations, particularly those that trade with their
own foreign branches (which produce or assemble parts). We all
know that the European Union is successful because, far from having
unleashed the “market forces,” it has harnessed them, carefully plan-
ning the smooth upgrading of the least advantaged partners, which it
has subsidized for decades in open violation of the free-trade gospel.
So much for globalization. Let us now turn to the 1973 oil crisis.
Contrary to van den Berg’s allegation, I did not state in my book
(p. 194) that the oil crises of the 1970s were “cleverly engineered by the
United States in the service of domestic oil interests and to stick it to
the Germans and the Japanese” (p. 603). The Economist made this accu-
sation (see Tanzer 1974, 135.) What I did say is that these were among
the many consequences of the steep rise in the price of crude oil
decided by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) in 1973. Nor did I make up the story that Henry Kissinger was
behind that price increase as part of the implementation of the so-
called Nixon Doctrine (ibid.). Although this increase had initially
been prompted by the Arab oil-producing countries, at the time
Kissinger was accused of giving the Shah the green light to raise the
price of oil to pay for the arms needed to defend the American inter-
ests in the Persian Gulf area.
In his authoritative if sympathetic biography of Kissinger, Walter
Isaacson (1992, 564) admits that

even though there is no evidence to support the charge that Kissinger

encouraged Iran to push for a price increase anywhere near the magni-
tude that occurred, he was not free of all blame: it was a logical conse-
quence of the Nixon-Kissinger policy of encouraging unlimited arms
sales [to counter the Soviet menace].

The net result of this piece of unprincipled secret diplomacy is history:

Iran increased its oil revenues fivefold and its military budget seven-
fold; the Shah’s dictatorship became so oppressive that it united the
 Bunge / SOCIAL SCIENCE ACCORDING TO VAN DEN BERG 419

opposition—which six years later installed the Ayatollah Khomeini’s

theocracy; the United States was transformed from bosom friend into
the Great Satan; and the oil-importing countries went into recession.
So much for Kissinger’s Realpolitik, which he regarded as amoral
whereas its victims regarded it as immoral.
Speaking of amorality, we must now tackle a doctrine akin to that
of procedural justice that we discussed above, namely, Joseph
Schumpeter’s doctrine of procedural democracy. According to it,
democracy is not about the common good, as liberals and socialists
naively believe, but about votes. In SSUD (p. 171), I state that

by placing procedure before substance, the Schumpeterians [such as

Anthony Downs, the Public Choice school, Samuel Huntington, and
even Karl Popper] forget that politicians are elected to manage public
goods in the public interest. Hence, they will condone regimes where
elections are periodic and clean, but the voters are prodded by the local
bosses and the representatives serve the interests of the powerful.

Is it not possible that political apathy in the United States and else-
where is due, at least in part, to the fact that, while the procedural nice-
ties are being observed, pressing issues are skirted or wrongly
tackled?
There is more: Schumpeter’s formalist conception of democracy,
together with the common knowledge that unprincipled politicians
can buy votes in a variety of ways, may have contributed to his
rightwing shift in his later years. Indeed, his letters from Harvard
exhibit an intense hatred for substantive (principled) democracy and
a growing sympathy with fascism (see Swedberg 1991). Thus, as early
as 1937, Schumpeter praised Franco’s fascist dictatorship. In 1941,
when the Nazis were savaging Europe, he stated that “the readjust-
ment [i.e., Nazification] of Europe was over-due.” Throughout the
war he ranted against the liberals and “the Roosevelt dictatorship.”
When the war was over, Schumpeter condemned the Nuremberg tri-
als. And shortly thereafter he came to Montreal to lecture in favor of
Catholic corporatism, a doctrine that preached “moral reform”
instead of social and economic reform (Swedberg 1991, 170). That
same year the Britons embarked on successful social reforms inspired
by the Enlightenment vision of “the good of the people,” which
Schumpeter scorned in the name of his procedural view of democ-
racy. The opinion that form or procedure is more important than con-
tent or substance holds only in mathematical logic. Elsewhere it is
420 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / September 2001

shallow. And in social studies, formalism is often pharisaic to boot—a

fig leaf to conceal indifference to evil, as we saw in Matters of Theory,
above, with reference to legal positivism. Which brings us to the last
point.
Finally, my critic accuses me of repeatedly slipping from science to
ideology, particularly of what he calls the “leftish” kind. Let me start
by reiterating the principle that, whereas mathematics and basic sci-
ence are morally neutral, technology is not—and normative macro-
economics and the law happen to be sociotechnologies, as much as
management science and urban planning (SSUD, 297-305). Unlike
mathematicians and natural scientists, social scientists are in constant
danger of ideological contamination because they are often asked to
advise governments on matters of social policy, such as taxation and
social services. It is on such occasions that the ideological motivation
of some of their theories comes to light. I submit that, when such trav-
esties are perpetrated, the philosopher-scientist has the moral obliga-
tion to denounce them—as van den Berg (1988) himself did success-
fully in the case of “scientific” socialism. That said, I proudly admit
that, if leftish means being on the side of the downtrodden, I plead
guilty as charged.

CONCLUSION

I feel privileged to have had my SSUD reviewed by a practicing

and hard-nosed socioeconomist—and one whose trespasser alarm
did not get off. This is proof that dialogue between scientists and phi-
losophers is possible, and profitable to boot as far as I am concerned.
However, let us not underrate the difficulties of such dialogue or,
indeed, of any dialogue—notwithstanding the belief of the herme-
neutic school that all interpretation is straightforward rather than
hypothetical and therefore dicey.
I admit that dialogue is particularly difficult with someone who,
like myself or anyone else trained in mathematics or theoretical phys-
ics, thinks within a system (Bunge 1974-89). A conceptual system has
the virtue that all of its components hang together: every one of them
can only be understood and justified by reference to the rest, and
therefore they all stand or fall together.
However, what the French call derogatorily the esprit de système
exacts a heavy price from author and reader alike, namely, bulk. Did
the reader miss in SSUD a justification of the claim that Max Weber
 Bunge / SOCIAL SCIENCE ACCORDING TO VAN DEN BERG 421

preached Dilthey’s hermeneutics while practicing scientific realism?

Ah, he should have consulted the companion volume FPSS, where
the point is fully explained! Do I take for granted the problematic con-
cepts of basic need and legitimate desire? Of course not: they are eluci-
dated in my Ethics, which constitutes volume 8 (1989) of my Treatise!
And so on. You cannot catch a ball by the tail because it has not got
one.
Still, systemicity (or connectedness) need not discourage criticism.
On the contrary, it should facilitate critical analysis and orderly con-
troversy—as hopefully illustrated by this exchange with van den
Berg. By contrast, fragmentariness guarantees confusion and incon-
clusive debate, because it invites opportunistic detours and ad hoc
gap-fillings to avoid non sequiturs.

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