On the issue of inapt criticisms of neoclassical welfare economics and its false, misleading, but ubiquitous misinterpretation I call bad economics in the conservative style, I suppose one of the main ones must be attacking philosophical utilitarianism.
The first thing one must understand is that modern neoclassical welfare economics begins and ends with preference ranks of individuals, which for rhetorical reasons it chooses to call “utility,” albeit not literally meant to be useful or utilizable for any other end, such as evident happiness. Preference rank “utility” is not about making oneself happy, per se, except in some tautological sense. One may choose to make oneself miserable, take drugs, shoot off one’s foot, attack one’s neighbor, jump off a cliff. If one choose it, it’s said to have more “utility” to one than not doing it. Nor is preference rank “utility” about narrow self-interest. At the level of individual preference ranks (or “utility”), no restrictions are placed on the basis of those preferences, which may just as well reflect higher ethical propositions relating to other people as narrow self interest. The issue with narrow self-interest comes up not at the level of individual preference rank “utility” but at the level of other ethical propositions slipped in surreptitiously as part of the theoretical or model background, here relating to the range of issues typically under consideration. That issue is part of a critique often called “methodological individualism” and involves the fact ciphers in neoclassical economic models tend to have preferences about fruit, random other things, but never higher level ethical issues, economic values, democracy, equity, ethics, that sort.
So if neoclassical welfare economics is all about individual preference ranks, can it really be called a utilitarian ethical theory at all? I would say only in a very trivial sense. In a much more real sense, I would say it’s an anti-utilitarian ethical theory meant to prevent utilitarian critique. Historically, this neoclassical business of individual preference rank “utility” only came to the fore when older, more traditional interpretations of utility, more akin to real utilitarian ethical philosophy, began to generate unfavorable assessments of normative classical economics. Nor is it just the peculiar redefinition of “utility” and “welfare,” it’s this entire business of proposing one cannot say anything based in “utility” about interpersonal ethics, the lion’s share of ethics, the resolving of interpersonal conflicts of preferences as over resource allocation.
It’s fine to express concerns about the ethical half-theory of neoclassical welfare economics and its focus on individual preference ranks under unreal factual premises, and the misleading misinterpretation bad economics in the conservative style that seeks to make it appear a full ethical theory. However, it’s inapt to cast one’s opposition to either neoclassical welfare economics itself or its common misinterpretation bad economics in the conservative style as opposition to philosophical utilitarianism, per se. Conservative economic rhetoricians will be laughing at you, if you do that.
