The Declaration of Values

Myrdal's most consequential methodological contribution was his insistence that all social analysis proceeds from value premises, whether the analyst acknowledges them or not. The economist who claims to study markets objectively has already decided that markets matter. The technologist who celebrates democratization has already decided that wider access is good. None of these decisions is wrong. All of them are decisions, and intellectual honesty requires they be named before analysis proceeds, not buried in methodology where they can operate unseen. "There is no view without a viewpoint," Myrdal wrote, and the scholar who refuses to name the viewpoint does not eliminate it — the scholar makes it invisible, which is worse than stating it plainly, because invisible premises cannot be examined, challenged, or revised.