John Stuart Mills Politische Ökonomie als soziales Ingenieurwesen

Abstract

John Stuart Mill defines economics as a science that employs methods not fundamentally different from those of the natural sciences. The related assumption of the possibility of posing economic laws provides Mill with the foundation of an art of political economy that is capable of furthering social ends like a kind of social engineering. The theoretical foundations of this art presuppose a fiction of a lawlike regularity in the orientation of economic agents towards their own benefit in the production and exchange of goods. The present contribution critically examines this Millian fiction with regard to its specific understanding of economic action, and its problematic elimination of a dimension of understanding in the description of economic processes. Yet, Mill's own methodological reflections support a limited justification of the conscious fiction of Political Economy as a form of social engineering.