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2018 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

3. Economics and Modernity

Author : Bradley Bowden

Published in: Work, Wealth, and Postmodernism

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The current crisis of modernity, associated with sub-optimal levels of economic participation and growth, casts doubt over the utility of economic theory. Many current understandings are characterised by confusion and error. Adam Smith never spoke of “the invisible hand of the market”. John Maynard Keyes did not believe in deficit spending. Economics has, nevertheless, been central to the economic and social success of modernity over the last 250 years, providing growing levels of wealth, education, and social opportunity. Postmodernism, through its avowed hostility to economically informed debates in favour of discussions about power, deliberately excludes itself from debates that remain central to our times.

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previous chapter Intellectual Heritage: Debates at the Roots of Modernity and Postmodernism

next chapter The Legitimacy of Modern Management

Thomas Piketty, Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014), 257, 21.

Calculated from: World Bank, On-line Database: World Development Indicators, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator [Accessed 29 November 2017]. These figures are measured in terms of “purchasing power parity”, a measure that tries to eliminate the effects of currency fluctuations by estimating what can be bought within each domestic economy.

Antonio Guterres, “Report of the United States Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, 2017”, (New York, NY: United Nations, 2017), 10, 5.

Reference to “the invisible hand” is found in notable studies as well as in university textbooks. See, for example, Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1977), 1; Piketty, Capitalism, 9.

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chap. II, para. 9. [Given variance in page numbering in different editions, reference will be by book, chapter, and paragraph: not page.]

Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, (Early Modern Texts, 2015), 99. http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/smith1759.pdf [Accessed 9 December 2017].

Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chap. III, para. 12.

John Stuart Mill, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill: Principles of Political Economy, (Toronto, CAN: Toronto University Press, 1965), 795.

Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chap. I, para. 1.

Ibid., Book I, Chap. I, para. 1.

Ibid., Book I, Chap. VII, para. 4, 7.

Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, (London, UK: Macmillan Publishers, 1920), 291.

Piketty, Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century, 572.

Gabrielle Durepos, “ANTI-History: toward amodern histories”, in Patricia Genoe McLaren, Albert J. Mills and Terrance G. Weatherbee (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Management and Organizational History, (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 161; Michael Rowlinson and Chris Carter, “Foucault and history in organization studies”, Organization, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2002), 527–47.

Paul C. Godfrey, John Hassard, Ellen S. O’Connor, Michael Rowlinson and Martin Ruf, “What is organizational history? Toward a creative synthesis of history and organization studies: introduction to special topic forum”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 41, No. 4 (2016), 595.

Alan Mckinlay and Ken Starkey, “Managing Foucault: Foucault, management and organization”, in Alan Mckinlay and Ken Starkey (Eds.), Foucault, Management and Organization Theory, (London, UK: Sage, 1998), 1, 5.

For the Marxist influences on Foucault, see: Ted Benton, The Rise and Fall of Structural Marxism: Althusser and His Influence, (London, UK: Macmillan, 1984), 173–78; Jacques Derrida (trans. Alan Bass), Writing and Difference, (London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2001), 52, 69–70.

Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: Archaeology of the Human Sciences, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1994), 190–91, 202–03, 250, 225.

Murray N. Rothbard, Economic Thought before Adam Smith: An Australian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 1, (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006), 345.

Richard Cantillon (trans. Chantal Saucier), An Essay on Economic Theory, (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010), 62.

Ibid., 55.

Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chap. V, para. 17.

See Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chap. V, para. 8.

Ibid., Book I, Chap. VII, para. 4; Book II, Chap. I, para. 17.

M.C. Wells, Accounting for Common Costs, (Sydney, AUS: University of Sydney Press, 2006), 75–100; M.C. Wells, “Some influence on the development of cost accounting”, The Accounting Historian’s Journal, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1977), 47–61.

Rothbard, Economic Thought before Adam Smith, 435.

David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, Vol. 2 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1896), 267.

John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, (London and Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1973), 379–80.

Marshall, Principles of Economics, 314–15.

Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chap. VIII, para. 10, 12.

Ibid., Book III, Chap. III, para. 1.

Ibid., Book III, Chap. III, para. 2.

John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, (New York, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004), 74.

Ibid., 100–01.

Karl Marx, Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Vol. 1 (Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers, 1954), 477.

David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy, (Hobroken, NJ: Melville Press, 2015).

Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book II, Chap. III, para. 3.

Ibid., Book I, Chap. V, para. 4.

Ibid., Book I, Chap. VII, para. 9.

David Ricardo, The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, (London and New York: Everyman’s Library, 1969), 61.

Marshall, Principles of Economics, 79, 117–18.

Marshall, Principles of Economics, 316–40, 284.

Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chap. X, para. 1; Book IV, Chap. II, para. 9.

Ibid., Book I, Chap. VIII, para. 13.

John Maynard Keynes, “The pure theory of money: a reply to Dr. Hayek”, Economica, No. 34 (Nov. 1931), 393; Friedrich A. Hayek, Prices and Production, (London, UK: G. Routledge, 1931).

Oliver E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications, (New York, NY: Free Press, 1976), 8–9.

Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440–1870, (London, UK: Picador, 1997), 301, 318.

Ibid., 264.

Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book III, Chap. V, para. 21.

Ibid.

Ibid., Book IV, Chap. 6, Part II, 88. [Page number refers to original facsimile.]

Ibid., Book V, Chap. II, para. 87. [This is page number 424 in the original facsimile.]

Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest, (London, UK: Penguin Books, 2011), 136.

John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, (London, UK: Macmillan and Co., 1920), 9.

Ibid., 1.

Foucault, The Order of Things, 261–62.

Jean-Francois Lyotard (trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi), The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1984), 13.

Jürgen Habermas, “Modernity versus postmodernity”, New German Critique, No. 22 (Winter 1981), 13–14.

For Hegel’s belief in God-inspired determined, predetermined path, see: George Hegel (trans. J. Sibree), Philosophy of History, (New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1956), 36.

Louis Althusser (trans. Ben Brewster), For Marx, (London, UK: Allen & Unwin, 1977). Also see, Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar (trans. Ben Brewster), Reading Capital, (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1971).

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “The communist manifesto”, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow, USSR: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1951), 37.

Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, 43.

Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chap. V, para. 17.

Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, 313.

Ibid., 57.

Marshall, Principles of Economics, 299–300.

Marx and Engels, “The communist manifesto”, 40.

Karl Marx, “Afterword to the second German edition of the first volume of Capital”, in Karl Marx, Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Vol. 1 (Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers, 1954), 29.

Marx and Engels, “The communist manifesto”, 37.

Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, 420–21.

Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, 682.

Ibid., 284.

Karl Marx, “The British rule in India”, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow, USSR: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1951), 323.

United States Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1955, (Washington, DC: Department of Commerce, 1955), 199; United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics – National, October 2017, https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/ceseeb1a.htm [Accessed 4 December 2017].

Bradley Bowden, Simon Blackwood, Cath Rafferty and Cameron Allan (eds.), Work & Strife in Paradise: The History of Labour Relations in Queensland, 1859–2009, (Sydney, AUS: Federation Press, 2009), Appendix 21; Australian Bureau of Statistics, Characteristics of Employment, Australia, August 2016 – Cat.6330.0 (Canberra, AUS: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017), Table 18.1.

Antonio Gramsci (trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith), Selections from the Prison Notebooks, (London, UK: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), 13.

Ibid.

Ibid., 12–14.

Herbert Marcuse, “The containment of social change in industrial society”, in Herbert Marcuse (ed. Douglas Kellner), Towards a Critical Theory of Society: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 84–86.

Herbert Marcuse, “Cultural revolution”, in Herbert Marcuse (ed. Douglas Kellner), Towards a Critical Theory of Society: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 145, 127; Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1964), 247–57.

Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, “Preface to the 1944 and 1947 edition”, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno (trans. Edmund Jephcott), Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), xi, xv, xvii.

Ibid., xvii.

Marcuse, “Cultural revolution”, 18–29.

T. W. Adorno (trans. C. Lenhardt), Aesthetic Theory, (London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul), 361.

Keynes, General Theory, 379.

Friedrich A. Hayek, Prices and Production, Second edition, (New York, NY: Augustus M. Kelly, 1935), 82–85.

Keynes, General Theory, 320.

Ibid., 322.

Ibid., 322–23.

R.F. Khan, “The relation of home investment to unemployment”, The Economic Journal, Vol. 41, No. 162 (Jun. 1931), 173–98.

Ibid., 178, 174.

Keynes, General Theory, 27.

Ibid., 126–27.

Ibid., 293.

Ibid., 129.

Ibid., 379.

Richard Davenport-Hines, Universal Man: The Lives of John Maynard Keynes, (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2015), 357.

For arguably the best study of the New Deal, see: Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War, (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

100

Robert A. Caro, The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, (London, UK: Collins, 1982), Chap. 27, 502–15, and Chap. 28, 516–28.

101

Keynes, General Theory, 218.

102

Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1975), 83.

103

Work Bank, On-line Database: Gender Indicators, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS?view=chart [Accessed 1 December 2017]; United States Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1961, (Washington, DC: United States Census Bureau, 1954), 203. These figures differ from those for “labour force participation”, which include unemployed people actively seeking work.

104

Calculated from Work Bank, On-line Database: Gender Indicators.

105

Ibid.

106

Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 70.

107

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 40th anniversary edition (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2002), 11.

108

Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom with the Intellectuals and Socialism, (London, UK: Institute of Economic Affairs, 2005), 40.

109

Ibid., 264.

110

Calculated from, World Bank, On-line Database: GDP per Capita Indicators, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?year_high_desc=true [Accessed 30 November 2017].

111

Keynes, General Theory, 322–23, 92–93.

112

Piketty, Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century, 22, 259.

Title: Economics and Modernity
Author: Bradley Bowden
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Work, Wealth, and Postmodernism
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-76179-4

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-76180-0

Copyright Year: 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76180-0_3

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