Economics as the Study of Peaceful Human Cooperation and Progress

Steven Horwitz

Earlier this month I was the recipient of one of the annual Prometheus Awards from the Greek liberal think tank KEFiM. My award was for my contributions to economic literacy. My keynote acceptance speech is now available here. I weave several themes of interest to CP readers, including Mises's emphasis on how specialization and exchange lead to social cooperation, and Hayek's point that exchange is about turning enemies into friends. Economics is a lot more than an explanation of material progress. It helps us understand the growth of civilization and social cooperation, and how we are able to turn our swords and spears into plowshares and pruning-hooks.

"The reality of the last two centuries is that we have beaten our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks as we’ve learned that the liberal institutions of property, contract, and voluntary exchange are superior to violence and war. An ever increasing share of humanity lives under its own increasingly fertile vines and fig trees. We’ve learned that the positive-sum game of the liberal order is better at producing the world of Micah’s vision than the zero- and negative-sum games of plunder, whether feudal or socialist. Or nationalist. An increased understanding of economics helped make this happen and has sustained it in the face of enemies, old and new.

Unfortunately, we are at a dangerous point of losing this learning these days thanks to the revival of the forces of nationalism and socialism. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I do think that liberals need to engage in some self-reflection about whether our own rhetoric and way of talking about economics and liberalism don’t bear some responsibility for our dilemma. How often do we speak of markets as sources of not just prosperity, but prosperity for the least well off? How often do we speak of markets as the cause of peace and social cooperation and mutual interdependence? How often to we talk about how markets have humanized us and reduced our propensity to violence, and turned strangers into honorary friends or kin? It’s important to stress the material wealth that markets produce, but the point of even that is enabling us to live lives of peace, cooperation, and security."

Comments

[Santa]

Why is economics limited to studying only peaceful human cooperation? Can't it explain conflict and violence too?

[Atanudey]

Prof Horwitz. Thank you for your fine work. You are a great teacher. A deep bow of respect to you.

You write: "The reality of the last two centuries is that we have beaten our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks as we’ve learned that the liberal institutions of property, contract, and voluntary exchange are superior to violence and war."

I am dismayed to note that the US has a stockpile of nuclear weapons that could destroy the world a few hundred times over. I don't see them being turned into plowshares any time soon.,

[Steve Horwitz]

Santa: Sure it can. I wanted to emphasize the other issues in this talk for a variety of reasons.

Atanudey: My "we" was hardly limited to the US. All of humanity is a less violent place (per capita) than it used to be. In particular, the way we interact directly one-on-one is much more about peaceful exchange than violent appropriation.

And FWIW.... "As of 2017, the US has an estimated 4,018 nuclear weapons in either deployment or storage. This figure compares to a peak of 31,225 total warheads in 1967 and 22,217 in 1989, and does not include "several thousand" warheads that have been retired and scheduled for dismantlement."

Swords and spears have, in fact, been turned into plowshares and pruning-hooks over the last 50 and 30 years.