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Title: The Mind and the Market : Capitalism in Modern European Thought by Jerry Z. Muller ISBN: 0-375-41411-8 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 12 November, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Quite simply amazing
Comment: This is not a book I would have read six months ago since I am typically not very interested in economics or political theory. But a required class in modern political economy helped change my outlook and introduced me to what thinkers such as Adam Smith actually said, which is quite different from what libertarians claim today. Muller's book fed my new found interest and then some.
Muller examines how some of western civilization's greatest minds have thought about capitalism and the market. He includes thinkers that are both traditionally viewed as economists (Smith, Hayek, Schumpeter) and others not usually identified with economics (Burke, Voltaire, and Arnold). Each chapter provides an excellant summary of these thinkers and can be read alone or out of order if one wishes. One has to admire Muller for his objectivity, he studies the individuals according to their own terms and doesn't seek to judge them. Every theorist has identifiable faults and Muller points these out without bias. My personal favorite chapters were those on Smith, Hayek and Matthew Arnold.
My only (minor) criticism is that I thought Muller could have dealt with Keynes in more detail. I feel he short-changed the man who in many ways defined much of the mid-20th century. I also thought a chapter on Amartya Sen might have been interesting, but it makes since to pick those theorists who are dead since their work can't develop any futher.
Rating: 5
Summary: The course you always wanted to take
Comment: THE MIND AND THE MARKET is a compulsively readable history of economic thought which deserves to be a best-seller. I am not an economist or a political philosopher but rather a writer about the arts and culture, and I am devouring this book. The chapters on Hegel, Marx, and Matthew Arnold are each alone worth the price of admission. Muller carries his erudition lightly, and his prose has the calm, effortless, sparkling lucidity of a great teacher lecturing in his prime.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Great Economic, Political, Social, and Cultural Tapestry
Comment: Capitalism is the world's most powerful idea about political, economic and moral relationships between people, enterprises and the state. It has brought immense opulence to hundreds of millions of people and hope for economic liberation to hundreds of millions more. But capitalism is not just a way of doing business. No culture nor any state can harness capitalism with a management school curriculum. Capitalism is a complex tapestry of economic arrangements, governmental obligations, cultural traditions, personal behavioral norms, concepts for production enterprises, methods of management, public acceptance of investment, encourage of competition, religious and ethnic tolerance and ideas of personal property. It is a historical fact that secular states with individual economic liberty and free markets harvest the most from capitalism. Capitalism is not just economics.
Capitalism, as a global culture that defines our modern civilization, is therefore too important to be left to the economists. Jerry Z. Muller, a historian, has given us a book which in its sweep and breadth is up to the task of giving us a deeply thoughtful and insightful analysis of the evolution of capitalism's political, economic, social, ethical and psychological threads from early European thinking through the big intellectual ideas of the late Twentieth Century. He tells the story of the idea of the market, as it is formed and transformed by the great socio-politico-economic intellectuals - Voltaire, Adam Smith, Burke, Hegel, Marx, Simmell, Schumpeter, Keynes, Marcuse, Hayek, and others. As a historian, Muller interprets each man in the context of his time and culture. Muller's analysis is even handed, one of the great virtues of the book. There are thousands of political economy books, each with its own agenda if not unground axe. For me, The Mind and the Market is a level-headed guide through that thicket of thought. Muller coolly lays out the case for each ideology and clinically assesses its successes and failures, giving the devil his due, even if that devil is Marx, who while foisting the evil idea of collectivism upon the world did have empathy and voice for the terrible treatment of workers under early capitalism. Muller's trip through the minds of the great thinkers gives us the insights we need to understand how today?s manic anti-competition forces diminish our personal wealth and how governments with moral agendas weaken capitalism.
Even while Muller brings us tidal historical and economic insights, he also salts this book with one liners and anecdotes that illustrate the anatomy of capitalism. Here are a couple I liked.
- "Cultures that favor equality in poverty over greater but unequally distributed affluence tend to be less market oriented." Muller
- From Schumpeter: "The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for the queen but in bringing them within reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort."
- Burke voicing the dilemma of capitalism: "It is hard to persuade us that everything that is got by another is not taken from ourselves."
- Fascists and socialists exploit resentment of those who succeed under market systems. Muller relates how Hungarian communists took control in 1919. The Hungarian Soviet nationalized private enterprises, made wages uniform and guaranteed employment. Labor discipline and productivity declined steeply. The communist experiment failed after 133 days. I gather from subsequent world events that no one was paying attention.
The Mind and the Market should be read by every world citizen to understand how we got the flow of wealth we enjoy and the roles of the state, individual liberty and market competition necessary to sustain our affluence. Capitalism is fragile. It does not come automatically with democracy. US capitalism is buffeted daily by well funded or popular pleas for the state to intervene in the market. They come under banners of anti-globalism, criticisms of the World Trade Organization, preserving the American family farm, special tax breaks to lower costs of domestic producers, Buy American Act, requirements for domestic content, special tariffs, quotas or restrictions on foreign-made products, protection against exporting jobs, closed shops, sustaining the American manufacturing base, regressive income taxes, and dispensations to monopolize trade, among other anti-liberal policies. Jerry Muller's marvelously well-written and colorful story of the road to capitalism helps us understand the essential roles played by open, competitive markets, personal liberties and a secular state in preserving and expanding our wealth.
I commend The Mind and the Market to you without reservation.
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Title: The Company : A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea by John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge ISBN: 0679642498 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 04 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: In Defense of Global Capitalism by Johan Norberg ISBN: 1930865473 Publisher: Cato Inst Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Literary Book of Economics: Including Readings from Literature and Drama on Economic Concepts, Issues, and Themes by Michael Watts ISBN: 1932236023 Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Inst Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: Adam Smith in His Time and Ours by Jerry Z. Muller ISBN: 0691001618 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 03 July, 1995 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: The Gifts of Athena : Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy by Joel Mokyr ISBN: 0691094837 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 04 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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