Stanfield’s Concepts of Social and Political Economy: Introduction to the Special Issue

This paper examines the contributions of James Ronald Stanfield to social and political economy. We start the analysis with Stanfield’s contribution to institution building through his education of PhD students, building a graduate program in political economy, and through the associations of social and political economy. Then we go on to scrutinise his creative developments and applications of the notions of economic surplus and social reproduction. This is followed by his extensive work on Karl Polanyi and the disembedded economy. Finally we explore his path-breaking analysis of the great capitalist restoration, the nurturance gap and love. Stanfield was one of the greatest institutionalists and social economists of the last hundred years, and these four areas of energetic creativity are his prime achievements in the area.     

Adam Smith's Conceptualization of Power,Markets, and Politics

This paper argues that Adam Smith is a/the "founding father figure" of modern social/political economy as well as economics. Smith wrote extensively and insightfully on the subject of power , and thereby class and stratafication in society. This paper explicates four main types of power relations in Smith's analysis, notably drawing on the Wealth of Nations : wealth power, monopoly power, employer power, and political power. Smith's focus on power helps to differentiate his broader vision and rich discourse from that of many contemporary neoclassical writers and sharpens our appreciation for his contributions to social and political economy.     

Widening Wicksell’s conception of political economy: his “thoroughly revolutionary programme”

Abstract

Knut Wicksell’s opinion that political economy is a “thoroughly revolutionary programme” has often been neglected in the literature. Actually, Wicksell aimed at implementing such a programme in order to enlarge political economy as a “practical science”. It is articulated around three main features: a criticism of the marginal theories, the redefinition of society as a whole, and the advent of social justice. Indeed, Wicksell claimed that economic and social problems may be solved only by a complete social reorganisation. Hence, I show that Wicksell’s social reform programme drives his particular view of and approach to political economy.     

Marx 200: The Abiding Relevance of the Labour Theory of Value

ABSTRACT

Marxist political economy is alive and well, and not just because of the habitual turn to Marx in response to any crisis of capitalism. Both through Capital and through the continuing evolution of Marxism, Marxist political economy offers valuable insights that can illuminate the modalities of social and economic reproduction and the relationships between (different aspects of) the economic and the non-economic. Marxism’s presence has been felt through its own internal debates and debates with other approaches to political economy, and even through its influence on those reacting against Marxism. The key to the continuing relevance and analytical strengths of Marxist political economy lies in its capacity to provide a framework of analysis for unifying disparate insights into and critiques of the contradictions of capitalism across the social sciences. The instrument for forging that unity is Marx’s theory of value, the potential of which is examined and illustrated with reference to the Sraffian critique and two key concepts in Marxian political economy: the value of labour power and financialisation. They are explored in the light of the processes of commodification, commodity form and commodity calculation.     

The Spitalfields Acts and the classics: Ricardo,J.S. Mill,Bowring, and Senior on the London silk industry (1823 to 1841)

Abstract

Passed in 1773, the Spitalfields Acts were the main regulation of the London silk industry. Classical political economy has generally been depicted as one of the main causes of their repeal, occuring in 1824. Recasting the successive interventions of Ricardo, Mill, Bowring and Senior in their respective political context, we show how they exhibit a shift in the discussions, from commercial to industrial issues. After Ricardo and Mill stressed the need to free the trade, Bowring pointed out the superior quality of French products. Senior relied on his work to emphasise the question of copyrights, which dominated his 1841 accounts.     

The Political Economy of Monetary Institutions in Brazil: The Limits of the Inflation-targeting Strategy, 1999–2005

Abstract

This paper suggests that the time-inconsistency approach is inadequate to analyze the political economy of monetary policy in Brazil. The paper develops an alternative theory that emphasizes distributive conflict, and argues that building credibility with a fixed exchange rate and through inflation-targeting was not central for stabilization. A contested-terrain analysis of the Brazilian case suggests that the current monetary regime benefits financial or rentier interests while the manufacturing sector and workers bear the costs of this policy.     

Capitalism Unleashed: Finance,Globalization, and Welfare

Andrew Glyn, who died from a brain tumour in December 2007, aged 64, had been a key figure in socialist political economy since the 1970s. His seminal book with Bob Sutcliffe, British Capitalism, Workers and the Profits Squeeze, published in 1972, inspired a generation of political economists. It offered an arresting empirical analysis of the predicament of British capitalism, and occasioned a fierce and wide-ranging debate among socialist economists over its empirical accuracy, its theoretical approach and its political implications. It was one of the first and most important expressions of Ricardian Marxism in the 1970s, emphasising the importance of distributional struggles for the future economic and political development of capitalism.

He was actively engaged in politics and he was always ready to put his intellectual skills to practical use, as during the British miners' strike in 1984–5, when he provided a detailed critical analysis of the economic case being advanced by the employers and the Government against the union. At the same time he sought to understand the trends that were shaping the development of capitalism, and wrote two very influential books, Capitalism Since World War II: the Making and Breakup of the Great Boom (1984, with Philip Armstrong and John Harrison), and Capital Unleashed (2006), his analysis of the recent neoliberal phase of capitalist development.

He will be remembered for his skills as a teacher, his humane and tolerant approach to intellectual debate, and his lasting contributions to our understanding of contemporary capitalism.     

The <Emphasis Type="Italic">Acting</Emphasis> Person: Social Capital and Sustainable Development

Ron Stanfield has had a long and distinguished career as a social economist and commentator on the social economy. Of special concern to us in this article are Stanfield’s interests in social capital, sustainable development, and nurturance which we refer to as caring. We also take up several other virtues including sympathy, benevolence, and generosity that have been part of the economics literature from the time of Smith’s Moral Sentiments along with the associated vices of heartlessness, insensitivity, meanness, greediness, and others. This article attempts to show that (1) adding social capital to the machine-like individual of mainstream economics results in the acting person of personalist economics who becomes more fully a human person through social interactions that foster the development of several virtues or less fully a human person through other interactions that instill certain vices; and that (2) in matters relating to sustainability, becoming more fully a human person calls especially for the practice of the virtues of justice and moderation. In addition we have suggested a framework for thinking about sustainable development in terms of actuating and limiting principles and for developing critical values or performance standards for sustainable development that are person-centered.     

Stock Market Capitalism vs. Welfare Capitalism

This is the first in what we hope will be a new series of debates on important themes in political economy. Ronald Dore has long been known for his pioneering work on the Japanese economy and his contribution to the debate on different models and varieties of capitalism. He has recently published a major reappraisal and restatement of his approach, Stock Market Capitalism: Welfare Capitalism‐Japan and Germany vs. the Anglo-Saxons. In this book he focuses in particular on the challenges to the Japanese model in the 1990s, and the pressures for it to change. We invited him to summarise the argument of his book, and then asked three commentators, Gregory Jackson, Yutaka Kosai and Franz Waldenberger, to respond.     

MARX@200

ABSTRACT

The article begins by outlining the philosophic anthropology that Marx derived from his reading of Hegel. We continue by arguing that this formed the basis of his materialist conception of history and his analysis of the political economy of the capitalist mode of production, with particular reference being made to Marx’s theory of value and his account of the economic contradictions of the capitalist system. We then discuss his views on the nature of post-capitalist society, concluding with a critical but broadly positive account of the relevance of his ideas to modern capitalism. Marx, we suggest, should not be regarded as a purely 19th-century thinker, as some recent biographers have maintained.     

Psychology,social evolution and liberalism: a Hayekian trinity

Abstract

The work of Friedrich Hayek describes an extensive political economy, with explicit consideration of the psychological limits to human understanding, the market as a mechanism of information gathering and social coordination, and the relationship between market processes and the free society, where moral and political issues are relevant within a framework of continuous adaptation. Although the survival characteristics of social institutions largely defy rational enquiry, political liberalism secures the diversity that is necessary for evolutionary social adaptation.     

Error or absurdity? A non-cognitive approach to commodity fetishism

Abstract

Karl Marx presented his theory of commodity fetishism as an explanation of the mysterious appearance of social relations in a system of commodity production as natural phenomena. The standard interpretation of this as a failure to perceive capitalist social relations correctly depends on a particular modern sense of ‘natural’. If classical political economy and Marx used ‘natural’ in the Aristotelian sense, commodity fetishism appears quite differently: not as a cognitive error but rather as a manner of living under commodity production, one that is not wrong but absurd, the word fetishism tying commodity production to pre-Enlightenment, preliterate peoples.     

The institutionalisation of political economy in Italy and Spain (1860–1900): a comparative approach

Abstract

The process of institutionalisation of political economy has become of increasing interest in tracing the evolution of economic thought. This paper presents a comparison of the development of these processes in Italy and Spain, through the analysis of the presence of political economy in some institutions in both countries between 1860 and 1900: universities, economic associations, economic journals and national parliaments. This essay aims at supplying new insights to the consolidation of economics as a scientific and socially appreciated field of knowledge, and exploring the influence of the form of institutionalisation on the economic ideas diffused in a particular country.     

Thoreau's economic philosophy

Abstract

This paper provides an encompassing portrayal of Thoreau's economic thought. It is analyzed against the background of the history of economic thought and the economic thinking of his time. Thoreau's economic thought is an extensive examination of the ideas of classical political economy, and particularly of Jean-Baptiste Say, and it is a fundamental critique thereof. Thoreau recognizes that some aspects and foundations of the modern conception of the economy lead to an alienation of the human being from itself as well as to an alienation from nature. I demonstrate that this critique is a result of Thoreau's specific approach to the economy, which, based on his particular understanding of the human being and his philosophy of nature, seeks the meaning of the economy for human life and for nature. In this philosophical approach, which I characterize as an economic philosophy, Thoreau's deeper defiance of classical political economy and his original place within the history of economic thought are grounded. It leads Thoreau to an alternative conception of an economy of moderation, which is identified and described in detail. I conclude with considerations on the potential meaning of Thoreau's thought for current economic research.     

‘Catholic in its faith,Catholic in its manner of conceiving science’: French Catholic political economy in the 1830s

Abstract

This paper addresses a group of Catholic political economists in France in the 1830s, which was described by the Dublin Review as ‘Catholic in its faith, and Catholic in its manner of conceiving science’. A first section clarifies how contemporaries perceived this group. This is followed by an analysis of Villeneuve-Bargemont's Economie politique Chrétienne in order to outline a standard Catholic approach to political economy. Finally, that standard is used to chart the work of other Catholic economists within that group and to contrast it with the approach followed by other contemporary social political economists.     

Theological themes in Ricardo's papers and correspondence

Abstract

I review evidence from published and unpublished sources on Ricardo's theological ideas. The main focuses of interest are the existence of a natural morality independent of religious confessions, morality as the essence of religion, uselessness of theological speculation, justification of toleration for everybody, including atheists, and the miscarriage of any attempt at a philosophical theodicy. The paper explores also the connection between Ricardo's interest for theodicy and his views on the scope and method of political economy and suggests that his opinion that political economy should be a secular and value-free science close to mathematics depends precisely on theological reasons.     

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PUBLIC‐PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS AND ANALYSIS OF THEIR SOCIAL VALUE*

ABSTRACT: This article applies political economy theory to public‐private partnerships (PPPs). First, we propose that social welfare is the appropriate normative evaluation criterion to evaluate the social value of PPPs. Second, we specify the goals of PPP participants, including private‐sector partners and governments. Third, we review the observed outcomes of PPPs and analyze them from both a political economy perspective and a social welfare perspective. Fourth, based on a comparison of the actual outcomes of PPPs to normatively desirable social welfare outcomes, we propose some ‘rules for governments’ concerning the design of government PPP institutions and the management of PPPs. We argue that if governments were to adopt these rules there would be fewer PPPs in total, they would be more like traditional government contracts and there would be a greater likelihood of improved social welfare. However, political economy theory also explains why implementation of any reform will be difficult.     

Political Business Cycles,Elections and Entrepreneurial Finance: A Framework

Political processes affect the real economy. An important channel through which politics affects economics is uncertainty. It has been observed that political uncertainty is high around national elections and negatively affects corporate investments and foreign capital inflows. If national elections affect corporations and foreign investors, we should expect them to also affect entrepreneurial finance provided by investors like venture capitalists (VCs). To add to that, in a complex federal democracy, state level politics is a significant source of political uncertainty. This is the first paper to examine the impact of national and state elections on entrepreneurial finance and provides a framework of VC investment behavior in the face of political uncertainty. We find that VC investments decrease significantly due to political uncertainty around national and state elections. VCs respond strongly to national elections by decreasing the total investment value and the number of deals in election years. However, they give a softer response to regional political uncertainty around state elections by decreasing only the average deal size. The findings have important implications for governments, regulators and policymakers, and open up an opportunity to examine a variety of new questions which can provide a more detailed and nuanced understanding of the impact of elections on VC investments.

     

Thinking of Sylos Labini (or Sylos Labini's Thinking)

Abstract

This note reflects upon the methodological principles that Paolo Sylos Labini (1920–2005) brought to his work as a political economist. Sylos Labini drew upon history, political science, sociology and philosophy in order to explain economic processes, and he insisted that an interdisciplinary approach was essential to formulating effective policy responses to modern social problems.