Hi Jonathan
I think you are right to note that there are several notions of “employment” possible, and we have to be clear which one we are speaking about.
Your co-blogger writes:
“In the more precise and practical nomenclature, we define employment as a specific function of a complex economy built on the division of labor. As Will rightly pointed out earlier (as I have in another post), it is clearly possible to be employed by yourself and engage in autarkic labor. This should be considered employment for reasons I give in earlier paragraphs.”
I agree with you that:
“If employment is defined as the application of labor, with other factors production, towards satisfying some end, then nearly all (or all?) human action can be considered acts of employment.”
And also that:
“This is where I deduce my greater point: there needs to be a line drawn between the general theoretical concept [of employment], and the practical concept [of employment] which we can apply towards a division of labor/economy.”
I agree. If we are going to define employment (or labor) as effort + means directed by an individual towards some end, then at this point we should simply use the general and purely theoretical term “action”, in which case employment or labor are thymological concepts (they refer to content), not praxeological concepts (lacking content).
There needs to be a line drawn between praxeological concepts—those which are purely formal—and thymological concepts—those that refer to specific content.
If we are going to maintain that we intend the concept of employment or labor in a purely praxeological and theoretical sense, then we need to show how this concept differs (in a categorical way) from the concept of action.
I am skeptical that such a conception of employment or labor will be produced.
If I may suggest why I think these problems of definition persist.
If you read both yours and your co-blogger’s accounts of the definitions of employment, you both make the distinction between individual action that is isolated, and individual action that takes place within something called ‘the division of labor.’
But by the very the standards of what we have just discussed above, when we use this term “division of labor,” we have now introduced a practical as opposed to a purely theoretical (praxeological) notion.
If we used the purely theoretical term, we would write instead: “division of action”
But we don’t. We write “division of labor”
Paraphrasing you:
“…there needs to be a line drawn between the general theoretical concept [of employment or labor], and the practical concept [of employment or labor] which we can apply towards a division of labor/economy.”
Thus, we can see that by introducing the concept of “division of labor” where “labor” is a practical term and not a theoretical term, we have now left the nexus of pure theoretical logical entailment. We have now introduced a specific content into the chain of logical reasoning. We have inserted a practical concept in the chain of theoretical concepts.
Here is problem in my view.
The term “division of labor” is a holdover term from classical economics that has survived in the works of Mises and others. I don’t think this term is suitable for describing the phenomena at hand.
For example, if we consider the two terms in the OP: “voluntary” (involuntary) and “employment” (unemployment), and if we think about things a little, we will realize that the common denominator of both concepts is not that they refer to “the division of labor” but that both refer to the notion of another actor.
If we think of individual action, and consider what the notions “voluntary” and “employment” (in their practical meaning) have in common from the point of view of individual action, it is that both terms refer to another actor.
It is really not accurate to hold that “voluntary” and “employment” refer in action to “the division of labor.” If we ask ourselves and others what these two terms mean, we will be given a description something like:
Voluntary: what I do is voluntarily done when I am not forced to do it by another.
Employment: I am employed when another person pays me to do something.
(again, I refer to the plain and practical sense of these terms)
It’s a stretch to conceive that these terms refer to “the division of labor.” More accurately, they refer to the notion that another actor is present to the primary actor we conceive by methodological individualism.
Because economics or catallactics is the best (or virtually only) elaborated part of praxeology, scholars are hesitant to relinquish the historical conceptions of economics. Following Mises or others then, they are continuing to have recourse to the concept of “the division of labor” as the conception opposed to individual, isolated, or autarkic action.
This distinction arises not from directly contemplating the nature of action, but rather from the habit of accepting the historically developed economic concept “division of labor” and trying to make this concept fit the phenomena under discussion.
So we keep conceiving that opposed to autarkic action is “the division of labor” or “cooperation.” It is clear to me at least, that if we are referring to the notions of “employment” and “voluntary,” that the phenomenon opposed to autarkic action is not “the division of labor,” but rather action involving another actor. That is, action in which the datum of the actor’s action is, in some sense, another actor. This is not the same thing as “the division of labor.” The notion of “the division of labor” switches us over to an empirical-practical framework of concepts, because we subtly abandon the pure concept “action” and substitute the contentual, practical, empirical, notion of “labor.”
All the concepts of direct social interaction such as voluntary, forced, honest, dishonest, coercion, cooperation, employment, labor, etc., do not refer in their essential meaning to “the division of labor” per se. Rather they all refer to the idea that there is another actor somehow present to the individual actor whose action we analyze or conceive.
When someone forces me to do something, I don’t think to myself anything about the division of labor. I think about another person. The essential aspect of non-isolated action, in the context of the concepts “voluntary” and “employment” is not “division of labor” but simply presence of a secondary actor.
This is where social theory that develops out of classical and Austrian economics is stuck. Economists continue to try to conceive non-economic (non-market) phenomena using economic (market) conceptions.
The analytical method (Menger’s theoretical exact science, Mises’s praxeology, and Hayek’s Pure Logic of Choice) is a method that takes the data of individual action and arrives at “exact laws” “a priori propositions” or “necessary truths” by demonstrating the necessary implications of those data.
Hayek:
“…the data which form[s] the starting-point for the tautological transformations of the Pure Logic of Choice. There “data” meant those facts, and only those facts, which were present in the mind of the acting person, and only this subjective interpretation of the term “datum” made those propositions necessary truths. “Datum” meant given, known, to the person under consideration.”
However, this method, arising out of classical economics and proceeding through marginal economics, was developed with an eye toward the datum of the market specifically. The method wasn’t developed such as to be able to comprehend all data of individual action, but was only crafted to comprehend market data (prices, objects of exchange, etc.):
“The subject matter of economics came to be connected with the material things that are the objects of traffic in the market; it came to be linked peculiarly with the use of money in market transactions or with the specific social relationships that characterize the market system.”
(Kirzner, writing under the direction of Mises in The Economic Point of View)
This is the nature of, for example, the conception of “the division of labor.” It is a conception that does not conceive human action as such, but rather conceives only the “economic” or “market-directed” aspect of human action.
What has occurred is that the analytical method arose out of economic (market) science, and the data of individual action it assumes is market data. But there are other data of individual action besides market data. There are things such as “ethical data” or “political data” (ethical actions, political actions, etc.) that have to do with non-market aspects of life and action. There are things such as “mental data” or “psychological data” (so-called “mental actions” such as thinking, hoping, etc.). Economics as market science was not developed to conceive or apprehend these things…
This is why problems continue to arise surrounding the use of terms such as “voluntary” “employment” and “labor.” These terms refer to the presence of another actor in individual action. But owing to the historical development of economic (market) science, we continue to attempt to conceive these phenomena, not on their own terms, and not as they appear in individual action, but through the lens of market science.
We continue to take the theoretical apparatus that was designed to draw logical conclusions about market prices, and try to apply this apparatus to phenomena of action that are not conceivable in terms of market prices or exchange ratios.
In short, we continue to try to apply economic conceptions to noneconomic phenomena.