Economics and Political Economy Today: Introduction to the Symposium on Fine and Milonakis

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Ashman
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Economic Reason ◽  
Historical Reasoning ◽  
Subjective Value ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sphere Of Influence

AbstractEconomics has long been the ‘dismal science’. The crisis in classical political economy at the end of the nineteenth century produced radically differing intellectual responses: Marx’s reconstitution of value theory on the basis of his dialectical method, the marginalists’ development of subjective value theory, and the historical school’s advocacy of inductive and historical reasoning. It is against this background that economics was established as a discrete academic discipline, consciously modelling itself on maths and physics and developing its focus on theorising exchange. This entailed extraordinary reductionism, with humans regarded as rational, self-interested actors, and class, society, history and ‘the social’ being excised from economic analysis. On the basis of this narrowing of its concerns, particularly from the 1980s onwards, economics has sought to expand its sphere of influence through a form of imperialism which seeks to apply mainstream economic approaches to other social sciences and sees economics as ‘the universal grammar of social science’. The implications of this shift are discussed in Ben Fine and Dimitris Milonakis’s two volumes, where they analyse the fate of the social, the political and the historical in economic thought, and assess the future for an inter-disciplinary critique of economic reason.

From Freakonomics to Political Economy

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 81-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Fine ◽  
Dimitris Milonakis
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Neoclassical Economics ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

AbstractIn this response to the symposium on our two books we try to deal as fully as possible in the brief space available with most of the major issues raised by our distinguished commentators. Although at least three of them are in agreement with the main thrust of the arguments put forward in our books, they all raise important issues relating to methodology, the history of economic thought (including omissions), and a number of more specific issues. Our answer is based on the restatement of the chief purpose of our two books, describing the intellectual history of the evolution of economic science emphasising the role of the excision of the social and the historical from economic theorising in the transition from (classical) political economy to (neoclassical) economics, only for the two to be reunited through the vulgar form of economics imperialism following the monolithic dominance of neoclassical economics at the expense of pluralism after the Second World War. The importance of political economy for the future of economic science is vigorously argued for.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INCLUSION: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE WORKHOUSE SYSTEM

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cosma Orsi
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
George Berkeley ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
The Social ◽  
Policy Shift ◽  
The Rose

The aim of this article is to describe the rise and fall of the workhouse system in connection with the developments that took place in economic thought in the transition from mercantilism to the Classical tradition. By examining the economic debate about wages, efficiency, labor market, workers’ mobility, and unemployment, we discuss whether the social policy shift epitomized by institutional reforms like the Gilbert Act (1782), the Rose Act (1793), and the Speenhamland system (1795) was accompanied and eventually inspired by a change in the perception of major political economy issues. In doing so, we review the writings of Jacob Vanderlint (d. 1740), George Berkeley (1685–1753), Malachy Postlethwayt (1707?–1767), Josiah Tucker (1713–1799), David Hume (1711–1776), and Adam Smith (1723-1790), among others. Although a direct influence by these writers cannot be proven, the originality of the present work rests on the effort to put into perspective the arguments elaborated by economic thinkers and the proposals made by social reformers so as to identify possible connections between economic theorizing and social legislation.

Mill, Political Economy, and Women's Work

2008 ◽  
Vol 102 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
NANCY J. HIRSCHMANN
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Women's Work ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Women’S Work ◽  
Sexual Division Of Labor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Productive Labor ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Relationship Of

The sexual division of labor and the social and economic value of women's work in the home has been a problem that scholars have struggled with at least since the advent of the “second wave” women's movement, but it has never entered into the primary discourses of political science. This paper argues that John Stuart Mill'sPolitical Economyprovides innovative and useful arguments that address this thorny problem. Productive labor is essential to Mill's conception of property, and property was vital to women's independence in Mill's view. Yet since Mill thought most women would choose the “career” of wife and mother rather than working for wages, then granting that work productive status would provide a radical and inventive foundation for women's equality. Mill, however, is ambiguous about the productive status of domestic labor, and is thereby representative of a crucial failure in political economic thought, as well as in egalitarian liberal thought on gender. But because Mill at the same time develops a conception of production that goes well beyond the narrow limits offered by other prominent political economists, he offers contemporary political scientists and theorists a way to rethink the relationship of reproductive to productive labor, the requirements for gender equality, and the accepted categories of political economy.

Gender and the Guild Order: The Garment Trades in Eighteenth-Century Paris

1994 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 768-793 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith G. Coffin
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Female Labor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Forces

This article concerns female labor, guild organization, and eighteenth-century political economy. The first half of the article analyzes the changing relations between the major men's and women's guilds in the Parisian clothing trades, the norms that governed those relations, and the social and economic forces that reshaped them. The second half focuses on pre-revolutionary petitions from the guilds, which illustrate dramatically the different ways in which guildsmen and women interpreted the rules of gender in the corporate order. The guildswomen's distinctive perspective reflected their history, experience, and changing currents of economic thought.

From Fetishism to ‘Shocked Disbelief ’: Economics, Dialectics and Value Theory

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 9-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
David McNally
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Critical Survey ◽  
Value Analysis ◽  
Mainstream Economics ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Arrival

AbstractThe recent arrival ofFrom Economics Imperialism to Freakonomicsby Fine and Milonakis is especially propitious given the context of the Great Recession of 2008 – and the associated decline of public faith in the verities of mainstream economics. Fine and Milonakis provide a magisterial critical survey of contemporary economics and demonstrate the need for a ‘new and truly interdisciplinary political economy’ capable of ‘incorporating the social and historical from the outset’. But their cause requires the explicit development of value analysis within the framework of dialectical social theory. This requires foregrounding the ways in which Marx’s categories inCapitalare from the start historical precipitates that acknowledge their own inherent historicity.

scholarly journals The value in ‘value’: An exercise for embedding heterodox economics into sociology and social policy education

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Coombs ◽  
Ashley Frawley
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Economic Theories ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Subjective Value ◽  
Economics And Politics

With continuing resistance by economics departments to pluralising their curricula, heterodox economists have suggested an alliance with other social sciences. This article suggests the labour theory value (LTV) as an appropriate concept for embedding heterodox ideas into sociology and social policy teaching. While often seen as a relic of nineteenth century political economy, teaching LTV is beneficial as (1) it is one of few economic theories addressing causes of economic inequality and (2) the contrast with neoclassical subjective value theory (STV) facilitates discussion about relationships between different ideas of ‘value’ and conflicting political ideas about social justice. We present a series of exercises designed to introduce students to differences between STV and LTV. After running and modifying exercises over three years, we find the intervention broadly successful in encouraging students to engage with economic ideas and draw connections between personal experience, society, economics and politics.

John Neville Keynes: The Social Philosophy of a Late Victorian Economist

1995 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick Tilman ◽  
Ruth Porter-Tilman
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
History Of Economic Thought ◽  
John Maynard Keynes ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Minor ◽  
The Impact

John Neville Keynes (1852–1949) is best known for fathering one of the most influential economists of our time, John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946). Yet in his own day he was a formidable logician1 and economist himself. Although overshadowed by his colleague Alfred Marshall, his Scope and Method of Political Economy (1891) is still considered a minor classic and read by specialists in the history of economic thought. Maynard Keynes's biographers have portrayed Neville as having a powerful influence on him, even if they have failed to detail the impact of the father's logic and economics on his famous son.

J-B. Say and the Political Economy of his Time: A Quantitative Approach

1999 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Steiner
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Quantitative Approach ◽  
History Of Economic Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

Some years ago, George J. Stigler reminded the community of historians of economic thought that a great thinker of the last century, Adolphe Quetelet, had made a real methodological breakthrough in the social sciences by opening the door to quantification. Stigler himself tried to implement this method in the history of economic thought.

Nikolay Sieber in the history of prerevolutionary Russian economic thought

2018 ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
L. D. Shirokorad
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Organic Synthesis ◽  
Marginal Utility ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Three Stages

This article shows how representatives of various theoretical currents in economics at different times in history interpreted the efforts of Nikolay Sieber in defending and developing Marxian economic theory and assessed his legacy and role in forming the Marxist school in Russian political economy. The article defines three stages in this process: publication of Sieber’s work dedicated to the analysis of the first volume of Marx’s Das Kapital and criticism of it by Russian opponents of Marxian economic theory; assessment of Sieber’s work by the narodniks, “Legal Marxists”, Georgiy Plekhanov, and Vladimir Lenin; the decline in interest in Sieber in light of the growing tendency towards an “organic synthesis” of the theory of marginal utility and the Marxist social viewpoint.

Essays of a “comparatively progressive” economist (On the 150th birth anniversary of Vladimir Geleznoff)

2019 ◽  
pp. 135-145
Author(s):  
Viktor A. Popov
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
History Of Economic Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Russian History ◽  
Working Ability ◽  
Intellectual Inquiry ◽  
History Of

Deep comprehension of the advanced economic theory, the talent of lecturer enforced by the outstanding working ability forwarded Vladimir Geleznoff scarcely at the end of his thirties to prepare the publication of “The essays of the political economy” (1898). The subsequent publishing success (8 editions in Russia, the 1918­-year edition in Germany) sufficiently demonstrates that Geleznoff well succeded in meeting the intellectual inquiry of the cross­road epoch of the Russian history and by that taking the worthful place in the history of economic thought in Russia. Being an acknowledged historian of science V. Geleznoff was the first and up to now one of the few to demonstrate the worldwide community of economists the theoretically saturated view of Russian economic thought in its most fruitful period (end of XIX — first quarter of XX century).

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