The Theoretical Positions of the Austrian School and Chicago School Do Not Converge

But there is one fundamental question that must be explained. If we acknowledge that it was Eugen Böhm-Bawerk, L. von Mises and F. Hayek who offered the best arguments in favour of the market in the debate on economic calculation in a communist society, why have their ideas been marginalized when it comes to offering a view of society? Why is pre-eminence given to the liberalism of the Chicago School and their homo economicus? It is generally argued that the contributions of the Austrian School have been absorbed into the present liberal neoclassical paradigm. I consider this argument to be false and the object of this book is to refute it. The theoretical positions of the Austrian School and Chicago School do not converge. The former is characterized by its construction of a theory of action, whose core is the creative capacity of people in their social and cultural environment. The latter reduces all human behaviour to a mere optimization of functions with restrictions. And here arises the radical question in the present debate on the social sciences: does the overcoming of socialism imply reducing man to the neoclassical homo economicus? In the following pages, you will find the arguments in favour of a humanistic economics based on the contributions of the Austrian School in order to transcend the so-called scientistic reductionism of the Chicago School.

--Javier Aranzadi, preface to Liberalism against Liberalism: Theoretical Analysis of the Works of Ludwig von Mises and Gary Becker, Foundations of the Market Economy (London: Routledge, 2006), xv.