Felix Kaufmann on Joseph Mayer’s Social Science Principles (1942)

Felix Kaufmann’s journal book review assesses Joseph Mayer’s critique of classical and neoclassical economics as both a substantial scholarly achievement and an occasion to clarify what methodological criticism can establish. Kaufmann’s central distinction is between an explanatory method and the philosophical arguments used to justify it. Showing that those arguments are mistaken does not necessarily invalidate the method itself. This distinction allows him to acknowledge Mayer’s achievement while resisting the claim that criticism of “economic man” amounts to a complete refutation of economic theory.

The review first outlines the book’s six-part organization. Mayer moves from scientific method and social study through classical cost and utility theory, its underlying suppositions, and broader concepts of value, before addressing historical and contemporary economic fundamentals and drawing critical conclusions. Kaufmann identifies economic value theory as the principal subject, but emphasizes that Mayer’s argument has implications for methodology throughout the social sciences. Its organizing charge is that purportedly scientific theories have rested on rationalistic assumptions about human nature:

The author's chief objection to these value theories is that they have been arrived at by pseudo-scientific methods; rationalistic preconceptions have been the source of hasty generalizations concerning the fundamentals of human nature.

The problem is not simply that particular generalizations may be false. Such preconceptions also encourage theorists to regard their principles as immune to empirical refutation. Mayer’s proposed remedy, as Kaufmann presents it, is to expose these errors and replace them with hypotheses formulated in the spirit of scientific inquiry and contemporary knowledge.

Kaufmann praises the comprehensiveness of this undertaking. Situating Mayer alongside critics associated with the historical and institutionalist schools, he reports that he has encountered no more comprehensive criticism of classical and neoclassical theory. The sixteen years devoted to the book help explain its scale, but the praise concerns argumentative quality as well as accumulated scholarship:

Each argument is well considered and presented in clear language; the polemics, if sometimes quite sharp, are always fair.

The review then turns from appreciation to a qualified objection. Kaufmann argues that Mayer, like many earlier critics, does not adequately separate economic methods from the claims of ultimate validity advanced on their behalf. Classical and neoclassical economists offer ways of explaining market phenomena, but also seek to establish their complete adequacy through assumptions about necessarily wealth-maximizing conduct. Their account of rational behavior thereby becomes a purported foundation for the explanatory procedure.

Kaufmann accepts that critics have exposed the unreality of “economic man”; where perfect foresight is assumed, the model may even involve contradictions. He denies, however, that this establishes the wholesale failure of the theories:

What they did refute was an erroneous interpretation of the method, an interpretation that is likely to conceal the method's limitations.

The decisive conceptual move is to distinguish exposing a method’s limitations from proving that it has no explanatory use. Kaufmann develops this point through the Austrian marginal utility school, a principal target of Mayer’s criticism. He contrasts Carl Menger’s caution with the philosophical overconfidence of Böhm-Bawerk and Wieser, then observes that followers have successfully employed their methods without adopting their philosophical commitments. Application and justification must therefore be assessed separately.

The conclusion seeks methodological rapprochement. Critics themselves no longer reject all theorizing in social science, and advances in methodological analysis have removed obstacles to resolving the dispute. Kaufmann sees Mayer’s clear presentation of the problems as a contribution to that resolution. The review’s broader relevance lies in its demand for discriminating criticism: social science should abandon claims of philosophical immunity without treating every imperfect model as thereby refuted.