The intersubjective ontology of need in Carl Menger

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 1093-1113
Author(s):  
Toru Yamamori
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Classical Political Economy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Significant Change ◽  
Carl Menger

Abstract As I have argued elsewhere, there is no room for the concept of need in the prevailing neoclassical school of economics—without reducing the need to a purely subjective construct. Not so, however, both in classical political economy and in the contemporary heterodox schools of economics. The main aim of this paper is, firstly, to show the existence of the concept of need as such in Carl Menger—widely acknowledged as one of the fathers of modern economics; and secondly, to trace the concept’s erasure in the orthodox school along with its rediscovery in the heterodox schools. With this exposition on the history of the idea, I hope to demonstrate how taking the concept seriously would urge us to engage ontological research and would mandate a significant change in economic analysis, regardless of whether this change is considered to reside within the orthodox tradition or be deemed a departure to heterodoxy.

The Role of Numeracy in the History of Economic Analysis

1994 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid H. Rima
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Popular View ◽  
History Of

The popular view among many contemporary economists is that our predecessors were literate but not numerate. Their myopia is curious to those who have the benefit of greater historical perspective. Many early practitioners of political economy can be credited with recognizing that, by their very nature, the problems in which they were interested required them to measure, quantify and enumerate. From the seventeenth century onwards, inquiring minds had already learned to distrust information and ideas that derived from the then traditional qualitative approach to science, which described the sensations associated with objects and events. William Petty's Political Arithmetic is a case in point; it aimed not simply to record and describe reality in terms of

scholarly journals From Karl Menger to Charles Menger? How Austrian economics (hardly) spread in France

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-30
Author(s):  
Gilles Campagnolo
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Austrian Economic ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Austrian Economics ◽  
Austrian School ◽  
Classical Political Economy ◽  
Carl Menger

The father of the “Austrian” Marginalist revolution and founder of the so-called “Austrian School of economics”, Carl Menger, had a mixed reception during different periods of development of French economics. Somewhat welcomed in the early days, he was rather forgotten later on. Even his major works were not published in translation until recently. What is the reason for such a situation? Criticisms of classical political economy have to be understood in their French context. In comparison to other countries, this paper details the case of France, besides showing how later Austrians, such as Friedrich Hayek, found a limited audience. This comparative study of economic ideas in France must start with the reception of the views of the founder and the role and impact of adopting/adapting or rejecting his views by French scholars. What place did they find in French academia? From Carl Menger to a “Frenchified” Charles Menger, how was Austrian economic thought disseminated in France? This essay starts by recalling the Belle-Époque and an astonishing letter by Charles Rist for the Jubiläum of Menger, in which he deplored the lack of translation of the latter’s works. The Austrian School in France is then discussed as pure economics replaces political economy in the Interwar period, with the 1938 Paris Congress of “liberal thinkers,” as the Vienna Circle became known, also comparing issues in philosophy. The paper considers how Austrian theories of “pure science” were received in Paris from the Vienna of the 1900s, at a time of ”Crossroads,” to the present day, through the Postwar and Cold War, until a revival since the 1990s and a rethinking of economic ideas after 2008.

scholarly journals Effects of marginalism on drawing the social and historical from economic analysis

Sociologija ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-296
Author(s):  
Natasa Golubovic ◽  
Srdjan Golubovic ◽  
Srdjan Marinkovic
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Exact Science ◽  
Historical Aspects ◽  
Classical Political Economy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Reality

Endeavours to secure status of exact science for economics led to the exclusion of social and historical component from economic analysis. It is a long term process which started within classical political economy, gradually diverging the postulate upon which economic science is based from economic reality. Above mentioned changes are result of the long-term process during which holistic, social and historical aspects had been gradually removing from economic analysis. In this paper we will analyze the role of marginalism in the extrusion of social and historical from economic analysis.

scholarly journals PIERO SRAFFA: UN ECONOMISTA SCONOSCIUTO?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pier Luigi Porta
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Characteristic Feature ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
Scientific Programme ◽  
Theoretical Contribution ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Political Economy

This note outlines essential elements for reconstructing the intellectual route followed by Piero Sraffa on the basis of archival documents dating from the second half of the 1920s. These documents highlight Sraffa’s interest in Marx’s lack of success in linking his theoretical contribution to the reconstruction of its precedents in the history of political economy. Archival documents illustrate the formative phase of Sraffa’s scientific programme and show his intention to build a new theory starting from its premises in the history of economic analysis. Sraffa’s subsequent abandonment of the historical-analytical approach confirms Luigi Pasinetti’s view that Sraffa had to shelve an initial programme of great vastity and ambition to reduce it within feasible limits, of which his ‘equations’ are a characteristic feature.

scholarly journals O NACIONALISMO METODOLÓGICO NA ECONOMIA E A ECONOMIA POLÍTICA DOS SISTEMAS-MUNDO COMO POSSIBILIDADE DE SUA SUPERAÇÃO

2015 ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Pedro Antonio Vieira
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Latin American ◽  
World System ◽  
Friedrich List ◽  
Initial Application ◽  
Methodological Nationalism ◽  
Classical Political Economy ◽  
The World ◽  
Central Argument

RESUMO: O artigo discute a persistência do Nacionalismo Metodológico (NM) na teoria economia, desde a Economia Política Clássica até a Nova Economia Política do Sistema Mundial. O argumento central é que adoção de uma perspectiva nacional é praticamente inevitável quando a elaboração teórica visa subsidiar políticas públicas. Por isso, Georg Friedrich List parece ter sido um pioneiro na adoção do NM na economia. Pela mesma razão, o desenvolvimentismo latinoamericano incorreu no NM e a Nova Economia Política do Sistema Mundial não foi capaz de transcendê-lo. O artigo argumenta que a Economia Política dos Sistemas-Mundo tem potencial para superar o NM e ilustra este potencial com uma aplicação inicial desta perspectiva ao Brasil ABSTRACT: This paper traces the persistence of Methodological Nationalism (MN) in economic analysis, from Classical Political Economy to the new Political Economy of the World System. The central argument is that the adoption of a national outlook is almost inevitable when theoretical efforts aim to support public policies. In this sense, Georg Friedrich List was a pioneer of MN in economic analysis. For the same reason, MN was reinforced by Latin American developmentalism and couldn´t be overcome by the new Political Economy of the World System. The article claims that the Political Economy of the World-System has the potential to surpass MN, and illustrates this potential with an initial application of such a perspective to the Brazilian case.

The non-history of capitalism

1997 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Meiksins Wood
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
Classical Political Economy ◽  
History Of

AbstractSince historians first began explaining the emergence of capitalism, there has scarcely existed an explanation that did not begin by assuming the very thing that needed to be explained. Almost without exception, accounts of the origin of capitalism have been fundamentally circular: they have assumed the prior existence of capitalism in order to explain its coming into being. My intention here is to sketch a kind of potted history of these question — begging explanations and to consider their implications. I shall start with what has been called the ‘commercialisation model’, which has its origins in classical political economy and Enlightenment conceptions of progress. This model is arguably still the dominant one, even among its harshest critics, including both the demographic explanations that claim to have displaced the commercialisation model, and also most Marxist accounts, from the transition debate which started in the ‘50s until today. But there does now exist an important alternative account, and I shall end by considering that too.

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