The invention of capitalism: classical political economy and the secret history of primitive accumulation

2000 ◽  
Vol 38 (04) ◽  
pp. 38-2272-38-2272
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Primitive Accumulation ◽  
Classical Political Economy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Secret History

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 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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