Was I Too Kind to Peter Boettke?

My comments on a Peter Boettke post prompted a friend to send along a link to a Joe Salerno piece (review essay of Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement by Brian Doherty) written by  Salerno in 2007, where Salerno, in a much more detailed fashion, addresses some of the same points I covered in my post. From the Salerno piece:

Doherty's discussion of Austrian economics and its relationship to the libertarian philosophy and movement appears in a section headed by the opaque and less than literate title, "You Get Involved in It and You're Like in the X-Files of Academics" (Doherty 2007, pp. 434–38). Approximately one-half of the section consists of a garbled and rambling soliloquy by Peter Boettke that runs on for more than two pages. This is not entirely Boettke's fault since the passage is clearly drawn from an oral interview that should have been edited for length and clarity by the author. Moreover Boettke may not have been aware of the author's unorthodox reportorial style when he agreed to the interview. Its stylistic deficiencies aside, then, Boettke's harangue is remarkably — almost willfully — misleading and inaccurate. Doherty (2007, p. 423) appeals to Boettke's authority as "editor of the most thorough guidebook to modern economics, The Elgar Companion to Austrian Economics." Doherty (2007, p. 435) relinquishes his interpretive role as a historian by solemnly averring, without discussion, that Boettke "understands the sociological realities that created a connection between the Austrian economic approach and libertarian political philosophy." Boettke's unedited monologue is then cut and pasted into the text immediately thereafter.

Let us try to disentangle and enumerate Boettke's.... points [and] present a critical evaluation...

 [Boettke says]Murray Rothbard "tried to demonstrate a causal connection [of libertarianism] with Austrian economics" (Doherty 2007, p. 436)...

Boettke's claim that Rothbard sought to establish a "causal connection" between libertarianism and Austrian economics is preposterous and most charitably characterized as based on sheer ignorance. Moreover, in the absence of further elaboration that is not forthcoming, the claim as stated is empty, for what does it mean to specify a causal connection between two different disciplines like Austrian economics and libertarian political philosophy? Nor does Boettke reveal which discipline Rothbard is supposed to have taken as cause and which as effect.

Granting the most plausible interpretation of Boettke's claim, namely, that Rothbard argued that Austrian economics scientifically proves that a libertarian political order is socially optimal, even someone with only passing familiarity with Rothbard's main methodological writings would recognize it as a patent falsehood. Indeed, Rothbard emphatically argued that economics is a strictly value-free science and the economist qua economist is therefore precluded from offering any policy recommendations whatever. The economist may of course advocate policy but only after he has explicitly stated a coherent ethical system from which his value judgments emanate...

More evidence of Rothbard's explicit denial of such a connection is found in his vigorous critique of his mentor Ludwig von Mises, who was himself a notable advocate of strict Wertfreiheit in economic analysis. Rothbard chided Mises for his various attempts to formulate a value-free and purely utilitarian standard for prescribing economic policy. Concluded Rothbard (1997b, p. 98),

[W]hile praxeological economic theory is extremely useful for providing data and knowledge for framing economic policy, it cannot be sufficient by itself to enable the economist to make any value pronouncements or to advocate any public policy whatsoever. More specifically, Ludwig von Mises to the contrary notwithstanding, neither praxeological economics nor Mises's utilitarian liberalism is sufficient to make the case for laissez-faireand the free market. To make such a case, one must go beyond economics and utilitarianism to establish an objective ethics…

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