Concluding Remarks
The technical limitations of welfarism come with consequences on a restriction of possible value judgements. The individualist framework itself, focusing on individual welfare only, excludes relevant values and obscures certain relevant information and solutions at the collective level.
The restriction of information on utility is an impediment to expressing certain desirable ethical views. We have shown that welfare economists did not respect these limitations when they faced the problems this causes in a practical context. In particular, Sen has shown that welfare economics may raise problems with democratic values because it restricts information and denies agents the right to decide for themselves what information should or should not be relevant.The essays in this volume show that, at least since the nineteenth century, when economists have faced practical problems such as public decision-making, concrete environmental or social concerns, they have abandoned one or more of the features of welfarism, adopting a non- welfarist approach. They have taken account of dimensions of welfare that cannot be measured, such as distributive justice and freedom of choice, paying attention to more than the satisfaction of preferences, and more information on utility that what the framework of welfare economics imposed. They have viewed welfare from a social point of view and they have introduced value judgements going beyond the very narrow range of values generally considered uncontroversial. The essays included here are clearly not comprehensive in their coverage; that would be impossible. But they cover many of the major figures in twentieth-century welfare economics - Marshall, Pigou, Pareto, Hicks, Samuelson, Coase, Musgrave, Arrow and Sen. Even though we also consider some self-consciously heterodox economists, notably Ruskin and Hobson, the instances of non-welfarist thinking that are presented here should not be dismissed as the views of minor, marginal figures for they were very influential in their own day. In view of this, there is a strong case that the history of welfare economics needs to be rewritten, and we regard this book as a first step in that process.