It is going to use calculus to spare itself the slowness of the work of
representation.
Economics exploits to the maximum the fundamental ambiguity of
facts and values, which are as impossible to separate as to blend to-
gether. One would think that the modernist Constitution had been
made especially for economics. If you say that this discipline is scien-
tific and must therefore describe in detail the complicated attach-
ments of things and people, according to the requirement of perplex-
ity, it will reply that it does not have time to be descriptive, because it
has to move on very quickly to the normative judgment that is indis-
pensable to its vocation. If you acquiesce, albeit in some astonishment
at this casual tone, you will be surprised to see that, in order to pro-
duce the optimum, economics does not burden itself with any consul-
tation, and its work of negotiation is limited to the calculus alone.
The requirements of relevance and of publicity* do not seem to con-
cern it either. If you become indignant at this cavalier attitude, eco-
nomics will signal you to be quiet: “Shh! I’m calculating.. .” and will
claim not to need either to consult or to negotiate, because it is a Sci-
ence and because, if it defines what must be, it does so in the name of
its laws cast in bronze, as indisputable as those of nature. If you point
out politely that it is difficult to be counted as a science before devot-
ing a great deal of time to the requirements of description, before
plunging into controversies, before deploying instruments that are as
fragile as they are costly, it will reply that itprescribeswhat must be
done; and if you object once again, losing all patience, that economics
does not respect values because it has jumped over all the require-
ments of prescription, it will retort scornfully that it onlydescribes
facts, without concerning itself with values! By allowing the discipline
of economics to unfold, one thus keeps the collective, by the cleverest
of schemes,from having to produce any description in the name of prescrip-
tion, and from having to hold any public debate in the name of simple de-
scription.
With political economics, the impossible task of distinguishing be-
tween facts and values, which we have compared to the labors of Sisy-
phus, becomes so effective that it makes it possible to get both scien-
tists and politicians all mixed up: one can no longer appeal to human
values over and against raw facts, but at the same time one cannot do
without the absolute distinction between facts and values! In the end,
POLITICS OF NATURE
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