Patterns of intention: Oberkampf and Knoll as Schumpeterian entrepreneurs

ABSTRACT

Presented here is an analysis of Schumpeter’s interest in political economy, as it relates to his use of history to investigate economic change and capitalism. This aspect of Schumpeter’s work – referring to style and involving a range of moral and aesthetic considerations – is largely neglected in entrepreneurship studies despite his influence on the discipline. This paper argues these considerations are essential to understand Schumpeter’s entrepreneur and the role of creative destruction in rejuvenating capitalism. However, his theory also involves political inclinations and choices, such as elitism and a fear of declinism, both of which are more typical to conservative not destructive worldviews. To illustrate my argument I examine and describe two cases, those of Oberkampf and Knoll, the latter a rough contemporary of Schumpeter. The findings point to the central role of political economy in past and present debates about the political role of entrepreneurship in society, suggesting a need for further attention to the zeitgeist (spirit of the time) in future research.     

RAPID GROWTH IN CHINA AND THE ASIAN ECONOMIES: SOME STYLISED FREE‐MARKET POLICY INFERENCES

The focus of this article is on the rapid growth of the Chinese economy and its ongoing interaction with the rest of Asia. It concludes that rapid growth in both Asia and China has resulted from free‐market‐oriented neoclassical economic policies and principles. Owing to its economy's size, its openness and the briskness of its GDP growth, China has influenced economies across the globe as well as the more proximate regional economy.     

India's Evolving Economic Model:

Abstract Over the course of the past 50 years, India has developed as a stable economy. Economic policies of the Indian government have guided and shaped India into a mixed economy. Political stability has been a significant factor in this process. The United States and European economic and political systems had a significant impact on evolution of India's economic model. Financial and economic reforms since 1991 have accelerated the pace of change toward an open market economy both in its internal operations and in its linkages with the global markets. India's economic future is now promising as it moves forward on its unique path of economic policy.     

Forefronts of the Sharing Economy: Uber in Cape Town

The sharing economy, often phrased as ‘platform capitalism’, enables firms such as Uber and Airbnb to monetize, through specific technologies of mediation, the networks, the assets and the precarious labour of those who are described as ‘the entrepreneurs of sharing’. This article explores the urban geographies of ride‐sharing in the marketization of Uber in Cape Town, South Africa. I use empirical evidence collected during the first phase of its operations in the city, between 2013 and 2015, to show how Uber relied upon the developmental entrepreneurialism of Cape Town to embed its ride‐sharing market locally, and how the drivers enacted multiple technical, economic and ethical regimes within and without the constraints of the software platform. The research presented in this article thus contributes to understanding how the discourses of millennial development, with its promises of entrepreneurial empowerment, are adopted by global sharing‐economy firms to enact their markets in the global South. It also reveals how a different genealogy of Uber's urban transactions offers an alternative perspective on the normative rationalities of the sharing economy and on the diverse economies that exist in relation to platform capitalism in the global South.     

Schumpeter,Commons, and Veblen on Institutions

This article compares Schumpeter, Veblen, and Commons with regard to institutions setting up the paradigm of institutional evolutionary economics. Their theories are of a complex nature, and as such, it is very difficult to situate them in a clear‐cut tradition. The main similarity is their opposition to the thesis that market economy is an independent and self‐regulating system, in an attempt to integrate economic, sociological, and political perspectives with regard to the functioning of the system. Also, change per se is in contrast to the notion of equilibrium. Of course, despite the parallels, the existence of differences is undeniable.     

The Political in the Era of Globalization and Finance: Focus on Some Régulation School Research

This article analyses macroeconomic developments of the 1990s in the light of recent propositions from régulation theory. These are concerned, firstly, with taking into account interdependencies between the political and economic spheres, with notions of the complementary nature and hierarchy of institutions, with the endogeneity of transition from growth to crisis and with the position of the nation‐state in a situation of greater international interdependence. Thus, they go on to demonstrate that ‘globalization’ relates, above all, to finance and is more the expression of a political project than of economic determinism. The extension of market adjustments has simply not led to the recovery of dynamic efficiency. The viability of various forms of capitalism depends greatly on the international configuration and on the political strategies of the various governments. Finally, the viability of a finance‐dominated or, perhaps, a property‐owning growth regime may prove problematic, as much from a theoretical as from an empirical point of view. L'article analyse lévolution macroéconomique des années quatre‐vingt‐dix à la lumière des avancées récentes de la th'éorie de la régulation. Elles concernent d'abord la prise en compte des interdépendances entre sphères politique et 'économique, les notions de complémentarit'é et hiérarchie institutionnelle, l'endogén'éit'é du passage de la croissance à la crise et la place de l'État‐Nation face à une plus grande interdépendance internationale. Ainsi, la ‘globalisation’ porte surtout sur la finance et constitue plus l'expression d'un projet politique que d'un d'éterminisme économique. L'extension des ajustements de marché est loin d'avoir conduit au redressement de l'efficacité dynamique. La viabilité des diverses formes de capitalisme dépend beaucoup de la configuration internationale et des stratégies politiques des divers gouvernements. Enfin, la viabilité d'un r'égime de croissance financiarisé ou encore patrimonial s'avère problématique tant d'un point de vue théorique qu'empirique.     

CAPITALISM,SOCIALISM AND CALCULATION

The merits and demerits of what we call ‘capitalism’ have been a source of much attention since Adam Smith wrote his seminal treatise on the salutary effects of free commerce and before. We consider the criticisms of the capitalist system as stated most prominently by Karl Marx, and we evaluate Marx's proposed solution to the evils of capitalism – specifically, socialism. We also explore the contributions of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek to the debate about whether Marx's proposed alternative was really an alternative. Mises and Hayek provide powerful critiques of Marx's socialist vision by addressing the problem of economic calculation and the inability of central authorities to acquire knowledge diffused and distributed across an entire society. We question whether Marx offered a solution and then consider more recent attacks on capitalism and its alleged destruction of cultural capital. The theoretical contributions of Mises and Hayek are supported by recent empirical contributions suggesting that liberal political economy is robust.     

Cities in Contemporary Capitalism

This article outlines essential concepts of the political economy approach of urban research and offers critical modifications and clarifications to some of its contentions concerning the functioning of cities as ‘strategic places’ of capital accumulation. The interrelations between contemporary capitalism and urban economic development are discussed at the scale of a transnationally extended urban system. Based on the general context of the global economic downturn, I focus on the role of cities in distinct circuits of capital, the switching of capital flows within the urban system and the different functional roles of cities within the world city network that interconnects cities both in the global North and South. I call into question the established focus of urban economic research on the role of cities as financial and service centres, arguing that cities might redirect their economic development trajectories towards ‘real economy’ activities, in contrast to relying on the disastrous development model of finance‐dominated capitalism.     

Lineages of Embeddedness: On the Antecedents and Successors of a Polanyian Concept

Since the 1980s, much debate has revolved around Karl Polanyi's concept of the “dis/embedded economy,” generating some light and not a little heat. This paper looks at three reasons that account for part of the “heat.” It begins by tracing the sources upon which Polanyi drew. They include Karl Marx, Ferdinand Tönnies, and Max Weber, along with anthropology of the inter‐war period, and German and American Institutionalist economics. After exploring the differing ways in which these varying currents conceptualize the relationship between economy and society, I explore the different interpretations of what Polanyi means by embeddedness, and the different purposes to which contemporary economic sociologists have put the term. For some, he is held up as the originator of a line of sociological analysis that treats “the economy” as a subsystem “embedded in” a social system. In this reading the emphasis is upon the moral underpinnings of market behavior, in contrast to the naturalism of Ricardo, Malthus and their heirs. For others, his “disembedding” thesis contains a more radical tale: of the market economy coming to dominate “society,” bringing forth a sorcerer's apprentice world of untrammeled market forces that, although human creations, lie beyond conscious human control.     

Beyond the Global City Concept and the Myth of ‘Command and Control’

The article argues that the lack of convincing empirical evidence for the global economy as being subject to ‘command and control’ results from that contention being a neo‐Marxist myth. First, imagining the global economy as being subject to ‘highly concentrated command’ through the function of some major cities as ‘strategic sites’ for the production of ‘command and control’ is traced back through several neo‐Marxist authors to narrate its genesis, and to argue that the lack of evidence for that proposition is a consequence of those antecedents envisioning capitalism as a totalizing structure, thus making the assumption that it is subject to control and coordination from a distance. Second, Taylor's interlocking world city network model is forensically examined to explain that it is fallacious because it is a structuralism that, bedevilled by a sorites paradox, contains the further problem of containing no credible evidence for the existence of ‘command centres’. Finally, the article moves beyond neo‐Marxism's key concepts by juxtaposing their assumptions with ethnographic results from social studies of finance, a manoeuvre which forges an understanding of cities as socio‐technical assemblages and eventful multiplicities, beyond, inter alia, the baseless assumption that the global economy is subject to ‘command and control’.     

THE TRUTHINESS HURTS

This essay applies some of the key insights in Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter. We discuss the relevance of cheap signals in political systems as well as the relevance of ideas in public policy with ‘rationally irrational’ voters. We add a fifth bias, ‘stick‐it‐to‐the‐man bias’, to Caplan's proposed anti‐market, anti‐foreign, make‐work and pessimistic biases, and we apply them all to environmental policy.     

‘Thatcherism’ without Thatcher?

Have Mrs Thatcher's more radicol policies prepared the ground for a substantial restructuring of the British economy? Or is she merely responding to fundamental economic changes that are stimulating a response in the political market? Nigel Ashford, Senior Lecturer in Politics of the North Staffordshire Polytechnic, contrasts the Government's timid policy response with the electorate's increasing desire for economic liberalism, and examines the gulf between Conservative economic policy and the more truly radical ideas Mrs Thatcher is sometimes thought to promulgate.     

Residential Enclosure,Power and Relationality: Rethinking Sociopolitical Relations in Southeast Asian Cities

As in many other areas around the globe, enclosed residential spaces have proliferated in Southeast Asia since the 1990s. Recent publications have presented such gated communities as ‘porous enclaves', implying multiple socio‐spatial dynamics of movements through gates and walls. However, the enclave model does not suffice for analyzing the relational dynamics generated by enclosed residential estates. The concept of ‘ecotonal space' and social geography are used to show, in the case of Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, that the enclosure and its borders are producers and products of multiple social, spatial, economic and political relations, both symbolic and material. Property developers assert their position as an emerging elite in the city's society and politics, a process based on different types of everyday relations they have with the inhabitants of their residential estates and territorial institutions. The enclosed residential estate can serve as a resource for deploying new power relations. Consubstantial with the neopatrimonial nature of the Cambodian economy and politics, this process is a response to the opacity and uncertainty of real estate markets and urban development.     

Between Rules and Incentives: Uncovering Hayek's Moral Economy

This article uncovers Hayek's moral economy. It focuses on the relation between markets, as well as on the nonmarket institutions on which the former rely, and the motivations that guide individuals' behavior. Despite his epistemological admonitions, Hayek has a rich set of suggestions about the functional importance of particular individuals' motivation and moral makeup for the development of a market society. This contributes to undermine his claims that a market society can be neutral among different values.     

Financialization of Housing in Brazil: New Frontiers

The financialization of housing has been increasingly identified as an important driver of social and economic change in contemporary capitalism. Focusing on the Brazilian context, this article considers the extent to which recent changes in housing regulations, policies and markets confirm or challenge narratives about the financialization of housing in the international academic debate. I argue that while many of the trends stressed in the literature are apparent, more extreme processes of financialization within the Brazilian housing sector remain limited––not only because of institutional and regulatory constraints, path dependence or political resistance, but also because of fundamental structural conditions of Brazil's position as a peripheral economy. Three different but mutually reinforcing processes are scrutinized in order to evaluate the financialization of housing and its limits in Brazil: the re‐regulation of the real estate financial sector initiated in the 1990s; the changing funding patterns among real estate companies since the mid‐2000s; and the increasing commodification of housing induced by a large‐scale and heavily subsidized housing program launched in 2009.     

Rewriting China’s Recent History: Fluctuations in State Economic Control, 1949–1984

China's political and economic systems are often discussed in combination. It is generally believed that under the political system of centralization, the economic system had to be a state monopoly. This article challenges that view by providing an economic perspective. The period 1949–1984 is selected to explore the causes of successive periods of strengthening and weakening of the state's monopoly power over the economy. Scholars have generally assumed that the period of state monopoly originated from socialist ideology or the personal will of the leaders. But economic conditions severely limited the options available. After the new China was established, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) did not try to create a fully socialist economy in the short run. Instead, the CCP formulated a New Democracy platform that pragmatically allowed many types of enterprise to function side by side, including private industry, household ventures, and state‐owned enterprises. The original plan of the CCP was to allow private enterprise to develop in order to build up capital to rebuild the war‐damaged economy so that a strong foundation could be established for creating a socialist economy. But the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 and an influx of Soviet capital caused a shift from a mixed economy to state capitalism by 1956. From that point on, Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders had to change course again and again as fiscal crises limited available options. A reversal occurred in 1958 when the Soviets withdrew both their advisors and their capital subsidies, leaving the state capitalist system weakened. The crisis in the Chinese economy from 1959 to 1961 required decentralization of economic authority and efforts to promote rural capital formation. The next shift occurred after 1963 as the economy was organized to prepare for a possible military invasion. The required mobilization of industrial resources in remote regions of China inevitably reinforced state management of the economy. The final reversal occurred in the late 1970s, when imports of Western technology and equipment created another fiscal crisis for the central government, which then had to shift the burden of capital formation from the state to private entities. The reform of the rural household contract system, the adjustment of economic structures, and an increase in exports to gain foreign exchange all took place as part of “de‐monopolization” reforms. The reforms that occurred after 1979 were not an aberration or a radical break from the past. They were part of a pattern that evolved from 1949 to 1984, with fluctuations dependent on the weakening and strengthening status of state finances. The shifts that occurred during this period have either been ignored by observers, or they have been misinterpreted as being motivated by ideology. In fact, new policies were created to enable the government to adjust to changes in the internal and external environment.     

China's Approach to Social Market Economics: The Chinese variant of Market Socialism Seeks to Escape from the Difficulties of Central Command Planning

Abstract . The paradigm of a social market economy provides a rational basis for resolving structural socioeconomic changes, as presently evidenced in the People's Republic of China. China's approach to socioeconomic change, labeled as “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” resembles a modified version of Eucken's paradigm of a social market economy.¹ The Chinese paradigm, leaning on that of Walter Eucken, provides for a “limited”free market, which not only accommodates economic growth and change, but which also makes allowance for some degree of human, especially economic freedom, and dignity. Eucken's model is based on a sound institutional and legal framework which he considered to be essential for a viable modern market economy. China's new socioeconomic program is moving the country in this direction. It takes into account people's desire for a useful and Just socioeconomic order (however defined), characterized by stable socioeconomic and political policies and by a flexible price mechanism, to enable them to live a life in dignity, free of economic deprivation.