DOCSLIB.ORG

Socialism and Marginalism in Economics, 1870-1930

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Socialism and Marginalism in Economics, 1870-1930 SOCIALISM AND MARGINALISM IN ECONOMICS 1870–1930 Edited by Ian Steedman London and New York SOCIALISM AND MARGINALISM IN ECONOMICS The rise to dominance of marginalist economics coincided with a major increase in the spread of socialist ideas. As many socialist and Marxist thinkers were preoccupied with economic questions this was scarcely a development they could ignore. Socialists either had to defend Marxist economics against marginalist criticism or show that socialism and marginalism were compatible. This volume explores the varied socialist responses in a number of major European countries including Italy, France, Russia and the German- speaking countries. No one response prevailed: some socialists defended Marxist economics and rejected marginalism; others criticized Marxist economics ‘from within’ without adopting marginalism to any significant degree. Yet others sought to effect a theoretical compromise or amalgam, or, again, to advocate an outright acceptance of marginalist economics and its use in arguing for socialism. The first chapter presents the general findings on a ‘cross-country’ basis, while the remaining eight chapters provide detailed case studies. The relations between marginalism and socialism are shown to be highly complex and variable, and this book pays equal attention to the differences and the common themes. It also highlights some of the many, innovative contributions to ‘classical’ political economy, some of which were only to be rediscovered after many decades. Ian Steedman is Research Professor in Economics at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has been much influenced by Italian economists. He has worked in trade theory, capital theory and the history of economic thought (especially Ricardo, Marx, Jevons and Wicksteed). His books include Marx after Sraffa, Trade Amongst Growing Economies and From Exploitation to Altruism. All net royalties from this work will go to Amnesty International First published 1995 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1995 Ian Steedman All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Socialism and marginalism in economics: 1870–1930/edited by Ian Steedman. p. cm.—(Routledge studies in the history of economics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-13079-4 ISSN 1349–7906 1. Marxian economics. 2. Socialism. 3. Austrian school of economists. I. Steedman, Ian. II. Series. HB97.5.S569 1995 335–dc20 95–7771 CIP ISBN 0-203-20899-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-26725-7 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-13079-4 (Print Edition) CONTENTS Contributors viii 1 SOCIALISM AND MARGINALISM IN ECONOMICS, 1870–1930: A BRIEF OVERVIEW 1 Ian Steedman Some common themes 3 2 MARGINALISM, CLASSICISM AND SOCIALISM IN GERMAN-SPEAKING COUNTRIES, 1871–1932 7 Heinz D.Kurz Introduction 7 Economics in Germany and Austria in the second half of the nineteenth century 8 German academic economics, marginalism and Marx: the beginnings 13 Early Marxist reactions to the challenge of marginal utility theory 23 Marxism under attack: Böhm-Bawerk’s critique of Marx 32 The Marxist counter-attack 38 Reformulations of the classical theory of value and distribution 47 The classicist-socialist camp: Oppenheimer, Lederer, Leontief and Remak 55 The marginalist camp: Wicksell, Schumpeter and Cassel 59 The 1932 Dresden conference on problems of value theory: the triumph of marginalism 67 3 COOPERATION NOT OPPOSITION: MARGINALISM AND SOCIALISM IN DENMARK, 1871–1924 87 Niels Kærgård Introduction 87 Julius Petersen and the left-wing Social-Liberals 89 Harald Westergaard, mathematical economics and Christian socialism 92 Jacob Kristian Lindberg and the labour movement 94 v CONTENTS Conclusion 98 4 SWEDISH MODEL MARKET SOCIALISM 102 Johan Lönnroth Early social democracy 102 Wicksell 103 Wicksell versus Atterdag Wermelin 103 Axel Danielsson and Gustaf Steffen 105 Steffen and Branting 106 Steffen as a professor 107 Wicksell as a professor 108 Cassel 111 Karleby and his followers 112 Conclusion 113 5 SOCIALISM AND MARGINALISM IN ITALY, 1880–1910 116 Riccardo Faucci and Stefano Perri Introduction 116 The intellectual background 118 Economic analysis 127 Concluding remarks 152 6 SOCIALIST DEBATE ON THE THEORY OF VALUE AND DISTRIBUTION: LA CRITICA SOCIALE, 1891–1901 170 Ian Steedman The early stages of the debate, 1892–93 171 The heart of the debate over Marx, 1894–95 174 The later debate, 1897–1901 182 Concluding remarks 186 7 FRENCH SOCIALISTS AND THEORIES OF VALUE, 1872–1914 188 Richard Arena The original Marxist ‘Trinity’: Guesde, Lafargue and Deville 189 Liberals and Marxists 192 The Revue Socialiste influence 194 The ‘decomposition’ of Marxism 196 Marginalists and socialists 198 Conclusion 200 8 PRESERVING DUTCH MARXISM FROM RIGIDITY? MARXISM AND MARGINALISM IN THE NETHERLANDS BEFORE WORLD WAR 1 203 Frank Kalshoven Introduction 203 vi CONTENTS The Dutch School 204 The outliers: Kuyper and Cornelissen 207 Concluding remarks 218 9 VALUE THEORY AND RUSSIAN MARXISM BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 224 Michael Howard and John King Tugan-Baranovsky 224 Bulgakov and Frank 228 Tugan-Baranovsky and Struve 235 Struve versus Tugan-Baranovsky 240 Dmitriev, Bukharin and others 248 Conclusion 251 Name index 258 vii CONTRIBUTORS Richard Arena University of Nice, France. Riccardo Faucci University of Pisa, Italy. Michael Howard University of Waterloo, Canada. Niels Kærgård Royal Danish Agricultural University, Denmark. Frank Kalshoven University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. John King La Trobe University, Australia. Heinz D.Kurz University of Graz, Austria. Johan Lönnroth University of Gothenburg and member of the Swedish Parliament. Stefano Perri University of Macerata, Italy. Ian Steedman Manchester Metropolitan University, England. viii 1 SOCIALISM AND MARGINALISM IN ECONOMICS, 1870–1930 A brief overview Ian Steedman* The post-1870 period saw the gradual spread and strengthening of marginal analysis within economics; to recognize this is neither to imagine that marginalism swept the board overnight nor to commit oneself to any strong view about the existence or otherwise of a ‘marginalist revolution’ in economics. That same period witnessed the growth of socialist ideas and movements and, given the importance of economic issues to socialists, it is hardly surprising that the marginalist approach to economics was widely discussed by them. Equally, of course, a number of marginalist economists discussed certain socialist ideas, not least the economic theories stemming from Marx. Indeed some socialists (often Marxist socialists) were prone to talk of socialism versus marginalism; a number of examples will emerge from the following chapters. Overall, however, those chapters will show why our title—socialism and marginalism—is an appropriate one, for the mutual relationships involved were complex, sometimes of conflict and sometimes of complementarity. Any notion of a simple, straightforward relation between socialism and marginalism is likely to derive at least part of its (apparent) strength from oversimple characterizations, e.g. Marx’s objective theory versus subjectivist marginal utility theory. The reality, of course, was always far more complex. On the one side, marginalism was not in fact a fully finished and homogeneous body of economic analysis; rather it took different forms, offered alternative emphases, was still developing and, indeed, witnessed its own internal disagreements (cf. Wicksteed (1905) on Professor Marshall and his ‘school of apologists’). Socialism, even more obviously, was a positively protean conception which it would take a whole volume to characterize; here let us simply conjure up the images suggested by such labels as egalitarianism, collectivism, Guild Socialism, syndicalism, the planned economy, anarchism, Fabianism, Social Democracy, the Second International—all of which, with many others, form part of the mosaic of 1 IAN STEEDMAN ‘socialism’ in 1870–1930. Nor had Marxism yet become a monolithicsy stem of doctrine; the following chapters will draw attention both to disagreements between Marxists and to Marxists who explicitly rejected significant aspects of Marx’s economic theory. But if marginalism, socialism and (within socialism) Marxism were each heterogeneous—and they were—it is unsurprising that the relations between them cannot be captured by descriptions which are both simple and truthful. Nor, of course, is it implied that those relations, however complex, were unchanging throughout our period; the following chapters will point up various changes, both in the ideas of specific individuals and in broader tendencies. It will be clear, then, why no rigid definitions of marginalism and of socialism (or indeed of Marxism) are imposed throughout this volume. Nor will any very sharp boundary between academic and political writings be observed, even though the weight of the discussion will certainly incline to the former category. The focus of that discussion being clearly theoretical—
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Division of Labor and Society: the Social Rationalism of Mises and Destutt De Tracy Dorobăț, C
    Division of Labor and Society: The Social Rationalism of Mises and Destutt de Tracy Dorobăț, C. E. Published version deposited in CURVE May 2016* Original citation & hyperlink: Dorobăț, C. E. (2016) Division of Labor and Society: The Social Rationalism of Mises and Destutt de Tracy. The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, volume 18 (4): 436- 455 http://www.nsti.org/procs/Nanotech2009v1/6/M72.404 Publisher statement: © 2009 NSTI http://nsti.org. Reprinted and revised, with permission, from the Nanotechnology 2009 [Proceedings of the Nanotech International Conference and Trade Show 2009], p. 534-537, 03-07 May 2009, Texas, USA. This article is available under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, No- Derivatives license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/) *this replaces the post-print version which was deposited January 2016. CURVE is the Institutional Repository for Coventry University http://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open The VOL. 18 | NO. 4 | 436–455 QUARTERLY WINTER 2015 JOURNAL of AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS DIVISION OF LABOR AND SOCIETY: THE SOCIAL RATIONALISM OF MISES AND DESTUTT DE TRACY Carmen elena Dorobăţ ABSTRACT: Ludwig von Mises’s social rationalist views on society, first discussed in Salerno (1990), do not appear to have any precursors in the history of economic thought. The present paper highlights the contri- butions of a French philosopher, A.L.C. Destutt de Tracy, to the theory of social development as one precursor of Mises’s theory. I use extensive textual evidence to highlight the important similarities between the social theories presented in De Tracy’s Treatise on Political Economy and Mises’s Human Action.
    [Show full text]
  • Original Institutional Economics and Political Anthropology
    Original Institutional Economics and Political Anthropology: Reflections on the nature of coercive power and vested interests in the works of Thorstein Veblen and Pierre Clastres Coauthored by: Manuel Ramon de Souza Luz; Faculty of Economics; Federal University ABC; São Paulo, Brazil [email protected] John Hall, Department of Economics, Portland State University; Oregon, USA [email protected] Abstract: Our inquiry advances a comparison of the anthropological content of Thorstein Veblen’s evolutionary perspective with the foundations of the political anthropology drawn from selected works of Pierre Clastres. We seek to establish that what can be referred to as a clastrean reference can simultaneously offer new perspectives on institutionalism, while maintaining a radical and emancipatory understanding of Veblen’s writings. In this sense, we seek to reconsider and reevaluate the role of economic surplus drawn from Veblen’s anthropology, while also offering a general and critical perspective for understanding the emergence of coercive power within societies. (94 words) JEL Classification Codes B15, B25, B41 Key Words: Coercive Power, Original Institutional Economics, Pierre Clastres, Political Anthropology, Thorstein Veblen (Front matter: 169 words) This inquiry considers contributions of Thorstein Veblen by juxtaposing them to selected contributions of Pierre Clastres, a scholar heralded as a founder of French political anthropology. Differing from Veblen, with his backgrounds in Economics and Philosophy, Clastres’ generated an anthropology founded on fieldwork investigations. These investigations abetted his constructing a theoretical synthesis that considers the nature of power and, relatedly, countervailing institutions within selected indigenous societies found across the South American continent. His body of research stresses that the classless and egalitarian character of indigenous societies was not an outcome of the comparatively modest levels of technology and the lack of accumulated surpluses.
    [Show full text]
  • New Working Papers Series, Entitled “Working Papers in Technology Governance and Economic Dynamics”
    Working Papers in Technology Governance and Economic Dynamics no. 74 the other canon foundation, Norway Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance CONTACT: Rainer Kattel, [email protected]; Wolfgang Drechsler, [email protected]; Erik S. Reinert, [email protected] 80 Economic Bestsellers before 1850: A Fresh Look at the History of Economic Thought Erik S. Reinert, Kenneth Carpenter, Fernanda A. Reinert, Sophus A. Reinert* MAY 2017 * E. Reinert, Tallinn University of Technology & The Other Canon Foundation, Norway; K. Car- penter, former librarian, Harvard University; F. Reinert, The Other Canon Foundation, Norway; S. Reinert, Harvard Business School. The authors are grateful to Dr. Debra Wallace, Managing Director, Baker Library Services and, Laura Linard, Director of Baker Library Special Collections, at Harvard Business School, where the Historical Collection now houses what was once the Kress Library, for their cooperation in this venture. Above all our thanks go to Olga Mikheeva at Tallinn University of Technology for her very efficient research assistance. Antiquarian book dealers often have more information on economics books than do academics, and our thanks go to Wilhelm Hohmann in Stuttgart, Robert H. Rubin in Brookline MA, Elvira Tasbach in Berlin, and, above all, to Ian Smith in London. We are also grateful for advice from Richard van den Berg, Francesco Boldizzoni, Patrick O’Brien, Alexandre Mendes Cunha, Bertram Schefold and Arild Sæther. Corresponding author [email protected] The core and backbone of this publication consists of the meticulous work of Kenneth Carpenter, librarian of the Kress Library at Harvard Busi- ness School starting in 1968 and later Assistant Director for Research Resources in the Harvard University Library and the Harvard College 1 Library.
    [Show full text]
  • Cantillon and the Rise of Anti-Mercantilism
    CANTILLON AND THE RISE OF ANTI-MERCANTILISM MARK THORNTON* Resumen: En este trabajo se pretende demostrar que Cantillon formó parte tanto del pensamiento como del movimiento antimercantilista de su época, influyendo en gran medida en el cambio de opinión en contra del mercantilismo que se fue fraguando de 1720 a 1734. Clasificación JEL: B110, B31, N010. Abstract: This article places Cantillon at the center of anti-mercantilist thought and the anti-mercantilist movements in London and Paris between the time of the Bubbles of 1720 and his murder in 1734 and it places his ideas at the turning point between the eras of mercantilism and antimercantilism. JEL classification: B110, B31, N010. «It seems to me that there is a connection between physiocracy and anti-mercantilism, or at any rate between Boisguilbert (1646-1714) and Quesnay (1694-1774), though it is not easy to say just what this connection was.» Martin Wolfe1 «In itself Cantillon’s (168?-1734?) was a contribution of real significance, and it would be difficult to find a more incisive prophet of nineteenth-century liberalism.» Robert B. Ekelund, Jr. and Robert F. Hébert2 * Dr. Mark Thorntorn, Senior Fellow, Ludwig von Mises Institute, [email protected] 1 Martin Wolfe, «French Views on Wealth and Taxes from the Middle Ages to the Old Regime,» Journal of Economic History 26 (1966): 466-483. 2 Robert B. Ekelund, Jr. and Robert F. Hébert. A History of Economic Theory and Method (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975): 44. Procesos de Mercado: Revista Europea de Economía Política Vol. VI, n.º 1, Primavera 2009, pp.
    [Show full text]
  • Róber Iturriet Ávila ■ Castor Bartolomé Ruiz ■ Bruno Lima Rocha EDITORIAL
    Nº 521 | Ano XVIII | 7/5/2018 1968 – um ano múltiplo Meio século de um tempo que desafiou diversas formas de poder Patrick Viveret Glaudionor Barbosa Enéas de Souza Larissa Jacheta Riberti Erick Corrêa Joana Salém Maria Paula Araújo Olgária Matos Alana Moraes de Souza Leia também ■ Róber Iturriet Ávila ■ Castor Bartolomé Ruiz ■ Bruno Lima Rocha EDITORIAL 1968 – um ano múltiplo Meio século de um tempo que desafiou diversas formas de poder uando se fala em 1968, parece que se porque explodiram revoltas de jovens, de artis- trata de algo uno, um acontecimento tas e do operariado em vários lugares do mundo. coeso. No entanto, o mais correto seria Para a antropóloga Alana Moraes de Sou- Qaludir aos vários 1968, ocorridos em geografias za, Maio de 68 – marcante para a história das e contextos tão distintos como a França, a Tche- contestações ao capitalismo e às estruturas au- coslováquia, os Estados Unidos, o México, o toritárias – não foi superado, nem derrotado. Brasil e outros países latino-americanos. Ela diz que as lutas vão sedimentando substra- O ano de 1968 é múltiplo de sentidos, signi- tos, e toda vez que a sociedade se movimenta, de ficados e alcances. Na base da efervescência, algum modo os substratos emergem. estão as rebeliões estudantis e de trabalhadores O cientista político Glaudionor Barbosa que inflamaram ruas e desafiaram diversas for- vislumbra que é preciso consolidar uma narra- mas de poder. Chefes de Estado, ditadores, em- tiva de 1968 que aponte para um futuro melhor presários, reitores, professores e as tradicionais do que o presente. estruturas familiares, sindicais e partidárias – todos foram questionados e tensionados.
    [Show full text]
  • Schlicht, Ekkehart: Economic Surplus and Derived Demand
    Schlicht, Ekkehart: Economic Surplus and Derived Demand Munich Discussion Paper No. 2006-17 Department of Economics University of Munich Volkswirtschaftliche Fakultät Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Online at https://doi.org/10.5282/ubm/epub.940 Economic Surplus and Derived Demand Ekkehart Schlicht∗ Introduction A M (, v.vi.) has pointed out that most demand – especially labor demand – is derived from the demand for some other product. He wrote: “To take another illustration, the direct demand for houses gives rise to a joint demand for the labour of all the various building trades, and for bricks, stone, wood, etc. which are factors of production of building work of all kinds, or as we may say for shortness, of new houses. The demand for any one of these, as for instance the labour of plasterers, is only an indirect or derived demand.” This note demonstrates that the usual analysis of economic rent, as typically ex- plained for the case of consumers’ surplus, carries over to the case of derived demand. The assertion comes as no surprise; rather such is typically presupposed in all kinds of cost-benefit considerations involving derived demand, yet there is, to the best of my knowledge, no demonstration to the be found in the texbooks or the literature. This note is intended to fill the gap. ∗Institutional Economics Group, Department of Economics, University of Munich, Schackstr. , Munich, Germany, e-mail: [email protected], web: www.lmu.de/tpe/ekkehart. I thank Robert Schlicht for a simplifying suggestion. Derived Demand Consider a market for a consumer good with the falling demand curve (inverse demand function) p = p (x) , p′ < 0 () where x denotes the quantity demanded at price p.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Download
    Iconographisk Post • Nordisk tidskrift för bildtolkning Nordic Review of Iconography Nr 3/4, 2020. issn 2323-5586. pp. 157–205. Iconographisk Post Fred Andersson Nordisk tidskrift för bildtolkning Ph.D. in Art History, Adjunct prof. (Docent), Senior lecturer, Art History & Visual Nordic Review of Iconography studies, Åbo Akademi University, Finland. Email: [email protected] Nr 3/4, 2020 Iconography of the Labour Movement. Part 2: Socialist Iconography, 1848–1952 innehåll / contents Abstract: This is Part 2 of a two-part study which aims at preliminary conclusions re- garding the iconography of the international labour movement. Earlier research in the Förord / Editorial 3 fields of social history, art history and visual rhetorics has been consulted for this pur- pose. After 1848, emerging socialist parties and labour unions depended on republican Søren Kaspersen “Quale sit intus in his” – A Note about Abbot Suger's 9 iconography for their manifestation of collective identity. The republican virtues of Bronze Doors in Saint-Denis Liberty, Equality and Fraternity remained important, but Fraternity was gradually re- placed or merged with Unity and Solidarity. In a process akin to the identification of Anders Ödman the goddess of Liberty with a more common “Marianne”, the representation of Unity Östra Sallerups kyrka i Frosta härad, Skåne: 27 and manual work in socialist iconography became focused on images of individual kolonisation och kulturella kontakter male or female workers. In earlier prints and illustrations, these representations have Ragnhild M. Bø strong affinities with how the concept of labour was personified in official monuments Miracle, Moral and Memory: Situating the Miracles 53 of the same period.
    [Show full text]
  • Towards a Theory of Business Capital
    Towards a Theory of Business Capital Kumulative Habilitationsschrift zur Erlangung der Lehrbefugnis für das Fachgebiet Volkswirtschaftslehre vorgelegt von Dr. Eduard Braun aus Ludwigshafen am Rhein Institut für Wirtschaftswissenschaft der Technischen Universität Clausthal Fakultät für Energie- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften Content 1. Introduction ............................................................................................. 1 1.1 The institutional framework of capitalism ........................................... 1 1.2 Reform of capitalistic institutions without a theory of capital? ........... 5 1.3 The realistic notion of capital in the history of economic thought ...... 8 1.4 Overview of the thesis ....................................................................... 12 2. Articles contributed to this thesis ........................................................ 15 2.1 Overview of the articles ..................................................................... 15 2.2 Summary and classification of the articles contributed to this thesis 17 2.2.1 Contributions to the history of the business-capital theory ......... 17 2.2.2 The theory of business capital ..................................................... 19 2.2.3 The role of financial accounting in the market economy ............ 22 3. Concluding Remarks ............................................................................ 25 References .................................................................................................. 27 A. Appendix ..............................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Anarcho-Syndicalism in the 20Th Century
    Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th Century Vadim Damier Monday, September 28th 2009 Contents Translator’s introduction 4 Preface 7 Part 1: Revolutionary Syndicalism 10 Chapter 1: From the First International to Revolutionary Syndicalism 11 Chapter 2: the Rise of the Revolutionary Syndicalist Movement 17 Chapter 3: Revolutionary Syndicalism and Anarchism 24 Chapter 4: Revolutionary Syndicalism during the First World War 37 Part 2: Anarcho-syndicalism 40 Chapter 5: The Revolutionary Years 41 Chapter 6: From Revolutionary Syndicalism to Anarcho-syndicalism 51 Chapter 7: The World Anarcho-Syndicalist Movement in the 1920’s and 1930’s 64 Chapter 8: Ideological-Theoretical Discussions in Anarcho-syndicalism in the 1920’s-1930’s 68 Part 3: The Spanish Revolution 83 Chapter 9: The Uprising of July 19th 1936 84 2 Chapter 10: Libertarian Communism or Anti-Fascist Unity? 87 Chapter 11: Under the Pressure of Circumstances 94 Chapter 12: The CNT Enters the Government 99 Chapter 13: The CNT in Government - Results and Lessons 108 Chapter 14: Notwithstanding “Circumstances” 111 Chapter 15: The Spanish Revolution and World Anarcho-syndicalism 122 Part 4: Decline and Possible Regeneration 125 Chapter 16: Anarcho-Syndicalism during the Second World War 126 Chapter 17: Anarcho-syndicalism After World War II 130 Chapter 18: Anarcho-syndicalism in contemporary Russia 138 Bibliographic Essay 140 Acronyms 150 3 Translator’s introduction 4 In the first decade of the 21st century many labour unions and labour feder- ations worldwide celebrated their 100th anniversaries. This was an occasion for reflecting on the past century of working class history. Mainstream labour orga- nizations typically understand their own histories as never-ending struggles for better working conditions and a higher standard of living for their members –as the wresting of piecemeal concessions from capitalists and the State.
    [Show full text]
  • The Neglect of the French Liberal School in Anglo-American Economics: a Critique of Received Explanations
    The Neglect of the French Liberal School in Anglo-American Economics: A Critique of Received Explanations Joseph T. Salerno or roughly the first three quarters of the nineteenth century, the "liberal school" thoroughly dominated economic thinking and teaching in F France.1 Adherents of the school were also to be found in the United States and Italy, and liberal doctrines exercised a profound influence on prominent German and British economists. Although its numbers and au- thority began to dwindle after the 1870s, the school remained active and influential in France well into the 1920s. Even after World War II, there were a few noteworthy French economists who could be considered intellectual descendants of the liberal tradition. Despite its great longevity and wide-ranging influence, the scientific con- tributions of the liberal school and their impact on the development of Eu- ropean and U.S. economic thought—particularly on those economists who are today recognized as the forerunners, founders, and early exponents of marginalist economics—have been belittled or simply ignored by most twen- tieth-century Anglo-American economists and historians of thought. A number of doctrinal scholars, including Joseph Schumpeter, have noted and attempted to explain the curious neglect of the school in the En- glish-language literature. In citing the school's "analytical sterility" or "indif- ference to pure theory" as a main cause of its neglect, however, their expla- nations have overlooked a salient fact: that many prominent contributors to economic analysis throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries expressed strong appreciation of or weighty intellectual debts to the purely theoretical contributions of the liberal school.
    [Show full text]
  • Anton Pannekoek: Ways of Viewing Science and Society
    STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE Tai, Van der Steen & Van Dongen (eds) Dongen & Van Steen der Van Tai, Edited by Chaokang Tai, Bart van der Steen, and Jeroen van Dongen Anton Pannekoek: Ways of Viewing Science and Society Ways of Viewing ScienceWays and Society Anton Pannekoek: Anton Pannekoek: Ways of Viewing Science and Society Studies in the History of Knowledge This book series publishes leading volumes that study the history of knowledge in its cultural context. It aspires to offer accounts that cut across disciplinary and geographical boundaries, while being sensitive to how institutional circumstances and different scales of time shape the making of knowledge. Series Editors Klaas van Berkel, University of Groningen Jeroen van Dongen, University of Amsterdam Anton Pannekoek: Ways of Viewing Science and Society Edited by Chaokang Tai, Bart van der Steen, and Jeroen van Dongen Amsterdam University Press Cover illustration: (Background) Fisheye lens photo of the Zeiss Planetarium Projector of Artis Amsterdam Royal Zoo in action. (Foreground) Fisheye lens photo of a portrait of Anton Pannekoek displayed in the common room of the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy. Source: Jeronimo Voss Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6298 434 9 e-isbn 978 90 4853 500 2 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789462984349 nur 686 Creative Commons License CC BY NC ND (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0) The authors / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2019 Some rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, any part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise).
    [Show full text]
  • The Shifting Geopolitics of Coronavirus and the Demise of Neoliberalism – (Part 2)
    Reports The Shifting Geopolitics of Coronavirus and the Demise of Neoliberalism – (Part 2) Dr. Mohammed Cherkaoui March 22 2020 Al Jazeera Centre for Studies Tel: +974-40158384 [email protected] http://studies.aljazeera.n Terrible decisions have to be made when hospitals are overwhelmed in Italy [Getty] European economic historians fear some déjà vu memories of the Black Death, which spread in the continent in the mid-14th century and led to the death of one third of the population. This reduction of demography caused scarcity of labor, increase in wages, decrease in inequality, and contested the then-feudal system in Europe. It also paved the way for the Industrial Revolution which Industrial Britain was hit by ‘King Cholera’ in 1831-32, 1848-49, 1854 and 1867. Tuberculosis also was responsible for the death of one-third of the casualties in Britain between 1800 and 1850. This nightmarish refrain comes back now stronger as epidemics have been ‘great equalizers’, and may initiate long-term implications nor only for European economic growth, but also for the world economy. After the US Federal Reserve decided to slash the benchmark interest rate to between zero and 0.25 percent (down from a range of 1 to 1.25 percent) and to buy $700 billion in Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities in a Sunday emergency meeting, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 2,250 points at the open and trading suspended almost immediately the following day Monday, March 16. President Trump has framed the pandemic in xenophobic terms and made the wildly- irresponsible claim that “it will go away.
    [Show full text]