Economic value in political economic thought

2008 ◽  
Vol 102 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
NANCY J. HIRSCHMANN

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.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olabisi Delebayo Akinkugbe

AbstractWith regional economic integration (REI) as a major strategy for development, the African continent hosts a plethora of regional economic communities of varying ambition longevity and success. While in the 1970s, political-economic ideas built mainly on the “developmental state” informed the design of most of these agreements, the change in economic thought in the 1980s which ushered in the “neoliberal turn” has since influenced the design of most REI schemes in Africa, including the New Partnership for African Development. However, among other factors, inadequate transport infrastructure linking regions poses a major impediment to regional trade and development in Africa. The more so as most African governments are not able to meet up with the financial burden, pace and managerial capability for the efficient provision and management of regional transport infrastructure. The article explores the dilemma associated with the adoption of Public–Private Partnerships (“PPP”) as a mechanism for the provision of regional transport infrastructure in Africa. While sourcing infrastructure provision through the PPP mechanism has significant advantages, it is however also embedded with a complex financial, contractual and legal process. First, it explores the theoretical assumptions which inform PPP based on ideologies within law and development debates. It argues that theoretically, PPPs are reflective of the neoliberal policy set. Against the trajectory of governance in Africa, it critically foregrounds insights that are derivable from an application of Path Dependency theory to the institutional change which comes with the planned adoption of PPP at the regional level. These insights are essential considerations for policy experts to bear in mind both while designing the regional institutional framework for PPP and during the implementation stage. Secondly, although most of the past initiatives for the provision of regional infrastructure have fallen short of their flamboyant development policy goals, the article argues that the recently initiated Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (“PIDA”) provides a new hope for the future of infrastructure development in the continent. The article contends that PIDA offers a legitimate platform which with the requisite support of the regional economic initiatives can generate the enabling environment for the implementation of successful regional PPP infrastructure projects.


1999 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATHLEEN G. DONOHUE

The 1890s and the 1930s were periods of intense consumer activism during which organized consumers pressured government to regulate business on behalf of the consuming public. In both periods, however, the heightened awareness of the consumer had an impact that extended beyond the realm of grass-roots activism or government regulation. One of the areas profoundly affected by this heightened awareness was political–economic thought. In both periods, political–economic theorists turned their attention to the consumer, debating such issues as whether humans were fundamentally producers or consumers, whether civic identity should be rooted in the consumer or the producer identity, and whether the “good society” was one based on “producerist” or “consumerist” values.


Author(s):  
Alessandro Stanziani

The history of political-economic thought has been built up over the centuries with a uniform focus on European and North American thinkers. Intellectuals beyond the North Atlantic have been largely understood as the passive recipients of already formed economic categories and arguments. This view has often been accepted not only by scholars and observers in Europe but also in many other places such as Russia, India, China, Japan, and the Ottoman Empire. In this regard, the articles included in this collection explicitly differentiate from this diffusionist approach (“born in Western Europe, then flowed everywhere else”).


2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 632-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Brisku

This article explores the dilemma of the small Bohemian Lands/Czechoslovak nation (-state) in staying “in” or “out” of the larger Habsburg supranational entity in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. It does so mainly through the language of political economy (on national wealth creation and redistribution) articulated in the opinions and political actions of Czechoslovakia's two founding statesmen, the first president, Thomas G. Masaryk, and the first prime minister, Karel Kramař. The article argues that their choice of staying “in” the large imperial space was premised upon renegotiating a better political and political–economic deal for the Bohemian Lands, whereas the option of abandoning it and of forging the Czechoslovak nation-state was essentially based on political reasons. And while both advocated an interventionist role for the state in the economy during the imperial period, they considered such a prerogative even more essential for their new nation-state.


1982 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami G. Hajjar

My aim is to provide an exposition and a critical analysis of Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi's economic theory as derived from Part II of his Green Book, and since it is basically an essay of conclusions, sweeping generalisations, and ‘final’ or ‘ultimate’ solutions to man's political, economic, and social problems, my primary interest is to examine his intellectual sources.


2012 ◽  
Vol 111 (4) ◽  
pp. 663-679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leticia Veloso

This essay is based on extensive fieldwork with marginalized children and other working children in Rio de Janeiro, conducted in two favelas and on the streets of four different neighborhoods. Specifically, my research focused on how particular children try to earn a living on the streets by working, begging, or stealing, and why they label the whole range of such activities as “work.” In examining the various kinds of labor the children engage in as they try to make a living in Rio’s destructured, largely informal economy, I use “child street labor” to refer to these varied forms of informal, often illicit or illegal work performed by such children. My analysis uncovers multiple levels in which this child street labor is intertwined with other forms of labor and also with informality, illegality, and even crime. Through examining the kinds of labor engaged in by poor children in Brazil, I argue that they can be seen as a reflection of and a commentary on the meanings of formal and informal labor in Brazil, as well as on some of the changes currently observed in the nature of labor worldwide. Further, this kind of child work blurs some of the most basic distinctions in sociological and political-economic thought on labor: the distinction between what counts as labor and what doesn’t, between productive and nonproductive labor, and between legal and illegal labor.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Tetiana Artomova

Clarification of the laws of harmonious ordering of the social economy system was largely carried out in the depth of European civilization in the course of the evolution of fundamental scientific knowledge. Thus, the synergy of intellectual efforts of the representatives of classical German philosophy, English political economy and French social doctrines became a catalyst and, at the same time, a fertile cultural ground for the establishment of civic institutions of modern times. Transcendent understanding of civilizational values as a system of social relations is to be carried out by political economy – the science of economic laws. Such a mission of economic science was defined during the formation of its classic research line as the logic of the Middle Way. However, modern economic theory in content remains traditional. It does not conceive its object in a single space-time coordinate system or recognize the economic value (economic good) as its own object and the basis of social relations. For that reason, the most important concepts of civilizational heritage are considerably distorted. Freedom, equality, and brotherhood, which are considered to be political in origin, are the most important universal values that have been promulgated by the European community in modern times. However, the crystallization of the values of freedom, equality, and brotherhood in their syncretic unity is initially carried out in the depths of political economy. In recent times, each of them has been taken as one of the traditional methodological branches of economic science. Thus, the problem of freedom is key to the liberal-margin economic doctrine that today ideologically feeds educational courses in economics. In order to modernize the training courses, experts propose to restore their connection with the provisions of the authentic doctrine of liberal marginalization, and with the conceptual system of L. von Mises. This rethinking makes the logic of functioning of the modern market economy and the basic principles of neoliberal policy more transparent and at the same time shows the imperfection of liberal doctrine in comparison with the original scientific provisions of classical economic thought.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
MUHAMMAD KHAQIM ◽  
AGUS ARWANI

Reflection on Islamic thought is no longer concerned with the problem of indigenization of Islam which is more likely to conservation tradition, even leads to a syncretism that almost eliminates the orthodoxy of Islam. Musa Asy'arie is a postmodern intellectual Muslim figure in Indonesia who, with his philosophical ability, is anxious to give a strict critique as well as a clear direction to the economic development of Muslims so that the Islamic economy becomes an outlet for poverty and injustice to society. Type of methodology in this research is literature research with focus of study of Islamic economic thought Musa Asy'arie. This qualitative research is focused on a written document in the form of text produced by Musa Asy'arie. The approach used in this research is phenomenology approach. The phenomenological approach is intended to examine, to reveal the biography, his work and the pattern of his thought development from the perspective of history, that is, from the social and political conditions of the culture at that time. The research results of Musa Asy'arie' thoughts in Islamic economics refers to things that are of fundamental Islamic economic value which include the first divine principle which is where the deity or Gods, the second is the humanitarian province, the three are based on social concern or with other sentences more important piety social rather than individual piety.


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