Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Chapter 16 The Economics of Reindeer Herding: Saami Entrepreneurship between Cyclical Sustainability and the Powers of State and Oligopolies
- Chapter 17 European Integration, Innovations and Uneven Economic Growth: Challenges and Problems of EU 2005
- Chapter 18 Institutionalism Ancient, Old and New: A Historical Perspective on Institutions and Uneven Development
- Chapter 19 European Eastern Enlargement as Europe’s Attempted Economic Suicide?
- Chapter 20 The Economics of Failed, Failing and Fragile States: Productive Structure as the Missing Link
- Chapter 21 Emulation vs. Comparative Advantage: Competing and Complementary Principles in the History of Economic Policy
- Chapter 22 The Terrible Simplifers: Common Origins of Financial Crises and Persistent Poverty in Economic Theory and the New ‘1848 Moment’
- Chapter 23 Industrial Restructuring and Innovation Policy in Central and Eastern Europe since 1990
- Chapter 24 Capitalist Dynamics: A Technical Note
- Chapter 25 Neo-Classical Economics: A Trail of Economic Destruction
- Chapter 26 Modernizing Russia: Round III. Russia and the Other BRIC Countries: Forging Ahead, Catching Up or Falling Behind?
- Chapter 27 Economics and the Public Sphere: The Rise of Esoteric Knowledge, Refeudalization, Crisis and Renewal
- Chapter 28 Three Veblenian Contexts: Valdres, Norway and Europe; Filiations of Economics; and Economics for an Age of Crises
- Chapter 29 Civilizing Capitalism: “Good” and “Bad” Greed from the Enlightenment to Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929)
- Chapter 30 Failed and Asymmetrical Integration: Eastern Europe and the Non-financial Origins of the European Crisis
- Chapter 31 Renewables, Manufacturing and Green Growth: Energy Strategies Based on Capturing Increasing Returns
- Chapter 32 Financial Crises and Countermovements: Comparing the Times and Attitudes of Marriner Eccles (1930s) and Mario Draghi (2010s)
- Chapter 33 The Inequalities That Could Not Happen: What the Cold War Did to Economics
- Chapter 34 Industrial Policy: A Long-term Perspective and Overview of Theoretical Arguments
- Index
Chapter 29 - Civilizing Capitalism: “Good” and “Bad” Greed from the Enlightenment to Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2024
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Chapter 16 The Economics of Reindeer Herding: Saami Entrepreneurship between Cyclical Sustainability and the Powers of State and Oligopolies
- Chapter 17 European Integration, Innovations and Uneven Economic Growth: Challenges and Problems of EU 2005
- Chapter 18 Institutionalism Ancient, Old and New: A Historical Perspective on Institutions and Uneven Development
- Chapter 19 European Eastern Enlargement as Europe’s Attempted Economic Suicide?
- Chapter 20 The Economics of Failed, Failing and Fragile States: Productive Structure as the Missing Link
- Chapter 21 Emulation vs. Comparative Advantage: Competing and Complementary Principles in the History of Economic Policy
- Chapter 22 The Terrible Simplifers: Common Origins of Financial Crises and Persistent Poverty in Economic Theory and the New ‘1848 Moment’
- Chapter 23 Industrial Restructuring and Innovation Policy in Central and Eastern Europe since 1990
- Chapter 24 Capitalist Dynamics: A Technical Note
- Chapter 25 Neo-Classical Economics: A Trail of Economic Destruction
- Chapter 26 Modernizing Russia: Round III. Russia and the Other BRIC Countries: Forging Ahead, Catching Up or Falling Behind?
- Chapter 27 Economics and the Public Sphere: The Rise of Esoteric Knowledge, Refeudalization, Crisis and Renewal
- Chapter 28 Three Veblenian Contexts: Valdres, Norway and Europe; Filiations of Economics; and Economics for an Age of Crises
- Chapter 29 Civilizing Capitalism: “Good” and “Bad” Greed from the Enlightenment to Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929)
- Chapter 30 Failed and Asymmetrical Integration: Eastern Europe and the Non-financial Origins of the European Crisis
- Chapter 31 Renewables, Manufacturing and Green Growth: Energy Strategies Based on Capturing Increasing Returns
- Chapter 32 Financial Crises and Countermovements: Comparing the Times and Attitudes of Marriner Eccles (1930s) and Mario Draghi (2010s)
- Chapter 33 The Inequalities That Could Not Happen: What the Cold War Did to Economics
- Chapter 34 Industrial Policy: A Long-term Perspective and Overview of Theoretical Arguments
- Index
Summary
As we look over the country today we see two classes of people. The excessively rich and the abject poor, and between them is a gulf ever deepening, ever widening, and the ranks of the poor are continually being recruited from a third class, the well-to-do, which class is rapidly disappearing and being absorbed by the very poor.
Milford Wriarson Howard (1862–1937), in The American Plutocracy, 1895.This chapter argues for important similarities between today's economic situation and the picture painted above by Milford Howard, a member of the US Senate at the time he wrote The American Plutocracy. This was the time, the 1880s and 1890s, when a combination of Manchester Liberalism—a logical extension of Ricardian economics—and Social Darwinism—promoted by the exceedingly influential UK philosopher Herbert Spencer—threatened completely to take over economic thought and policy on both sides of the Atlantic.
At the same time, the latter half of the nineteenth century was marred by financial crises and social unrest. The national cycles of boom and bust were not as globally synchronized as they later became, but they were frequent both in Europe and in the United States. Activist reformer Ida Tarbell probably exaggerated when she recalled that in the United States “the eighties dripped with blood,” but a growing gulf between a small and opulent group of bankers and industrialists produced social unrest and bloody labor struggles. The panic on 5 May 1893 triggered the worst financial crisis in the United States until then.
In economic theory, this increasing concentration of wealth and power that resulted from ostensibly “free market” activities caused a massive upheaval against classical economics in the late nineteenth century. In his three-volume Main Currents in Modern Economics (1971) Ben Seligman expressively entitles the first volume, dedicated to this period, “The Revolt against Formalism.” This revolt was spearheaded under different labels—historicism, institutionalism, empiricism, social policy, religion, socialism, ethics—but all these movements were in practice directed against the two-pronged movement of Manchester Liberalism (similar to today's neoliberalism) and Spencerian Darwinism. Ricardian formalism and social Darwinism decidedly lost this battle.
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- The Other Canon of EconomicsEssays in the Theory and History of Uneven Economic Development, pp. 829 - 846Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2024