Economie et populisme

Dans les milieux libéraux, il est de bon ton d'imputer à l'inculture économique des français leur résistance aux réformes et la sclérose économique qui en résulte. Je souhaite bon courage et bonne chance à notre ministre de l'économie qui veut modifier la culture économique en France, et partage plutôt sur ce sujet l'opinion du grand économiste Frank Knight. Le 25 décembre 1950, dans sa conférence d'ouverture du Congrès de l'Association Américaine d'Economie (cf. ci-après), le fondateur de l'Ecole de Chicago laissait entendre qu'il ne fallait pas trop compter sur l'éducation pour développer l'intelligence économique et sociale de la population. Quand bien même tous les jeunes français recevraient à l'école une formation économique, les facilités et les séductions du populisme continueraient à s'exercer... Y compris parmi les formateurs !

Et pourtant, la crédibilité des démagogues est faible dans nos démocraties. Soucieux de ne pas faire des promesses qu'ils ne pourraient tenir, les hommes politiques responsables s'en remettent aux économistes pour définir l'espace des possibles. La fonction de ces derniers serait alors la suivante : "to serve as an antidote to the poison being disseminated by other social scientists, even economists"...

Voilà pourquoi nos grands partis de gouvernement sont tous plus ou moins immunisés contre l'aventurisme. Au grand dam des intellectuels populistes qui, non content de haïr notre économie libérale, haïssent tout autant notre démocratie libérale : "Alors que les gens sont anti-libéraux à 60 %, ce sont toujours des libéraux qui gouvernent. Il y a donc un problème avec cette démocratie, vous aurez toujours, en gros, la même politique quoi que vous votiez". (Bernard Cassen, alors président de l'Attac, Débats au Cercle Gramsci, 21 nov. 1997)

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The role of principles in Economics and Politics

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FRANK H. KNIGHT

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Presidential Address delivered at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, Chicago, December 25, 1950. American Economic Review, 41, March 1951 - Reprint in Selected Essays, vol. 2, Edited by Ross B. Emmett, Chicago UP, 1999 (extraits)

It is hard to believe in the utility of trying to teach what men refuse to learn or even seriously listen to. What point is there in propagating sound economic principles if the electorate is set to have the country run on the principle that the objective in trade is to get rid of as much as possible and get as little as possible in return ? If they will not see that imports are either paid for by exports, as a method of producing the imported goods more efficiently, or else are received for nothing ? Or if they hold that economy consists in having as many workers as possible assigned to a given task instead of the fewest who are able to perform it ? ... Can there be any use in explaining, if it is needful to explain, that fixing a price below the free-market level will create a shortage and one above it a surplus ? But the public oh's and ah's and yips and yaps at the shortage of residential housing and surpluses of eggs and potatoes as if these things presented problems — any more than getting one's footgear soiled by deliberately walking in the mud. And let me observe that rent-freezing for example, occurs not at all merely because tenants have more votes than landlords. It reflects a state of mind, a mode of reasoning, even more discouraging than blindness through self-interest — like protectionism among our Middle Western farmers. One must grant that some critics of rationalistic economics seem to have something in their contention that theories based on the assumption that men are reasoning beings run contrary to facts. (…)

If free society is to exist, the electorate must be informed, and must have and use economic and political intelligence, and of course possess the moral qualities actually needful. ... For help as to intelligence, we now instinctively turn to institutional education. This can certainly impart information, up to varying individual limits, and schools have also been successful enough in increasing knowledge... But does education make people intelligent ? As to certain "intellectual skills" no doubt it does... But as to good sense, the "gumption" required to select and reject between sound measures and crude economic nostrums such as I mentioned at the outset, the arbitrary interference with freedom of trade, fixing prices by fiat, and preaching revolution, the evidence is not encouraging. The "smart" and the educated seem to fall for these as readily as the man-in-the-street. Indeed it often appears that the result of costly training is to make people more ingenious in thinking up and defending indefensible theories. The crackpots of all kinds and degrees are not recruited from the dumbbell or ignoramus classes…