Figgis claims that the French Revolutionaries drew inspiration from Juan de Mariana’s endorsement of overthrowing tyrants, but the revolutionaries would have been wise to heed de Mariana’s arguments against fiat money. At the beginning of his treatise on the alteration of money, he . . . . Continue Reading »
Tracing the separation of “economics” from the rest of life, Dumont notes that one key moment was the blurring of traditional distinctions between fixed property in land and movables. This was based on the priority of the I-Thou over the I-It relation (not his terminology): in . . . . Continue Reading »
Like many scholars, Louis Dumont ( Essays on Individualism ) traces the development of modern conceptions of social order, individualism, and politics to Ockham: Ockham denied that general terms have any reality: “Ockham goes so far in his polemics against the Pope as to deny that there is . . . . Continue Reading »
“For centuries England has relied on protection, has carried it to extremes and has obtained satisfactory results from it. There is no doubt that it is to this system that it owes its present strength. After two centuries, England has found it convenient to adopt free trade because it thinks . . . . Continue Reading »
A recent New Yorker piece argues that big business remains the driver of economic growth: “the truth is that, from the perspective of the economy as a whole, small companies are not the real drivers of growth. One can see this by looking at the track record of the world’s economies. The . . . . Continue Reading »
Paul Kahn ( Putting Liberalism in Its Place ) traces the dominance of economic/market logic in modern politics to questions about the “faculties of the soul.” On the economic model of these faculties, he argues, interest is “modeled on bodily desire.” This does not mean that . . . . Continue Reading »
Americans, Hauerwas says, “presume that they have exercised their freedom when the get to choose between a Sony or Pansonic television.” That’s a cleverly subversive thing to say, but things are not quite as easy as Hauerwas makes them. Consumers may, for all I know, often be this . . . . Continue Reading »
In her 1999 book, The War Against Population: The Economics and Ideology of World Population Control , Jacqueline Kasun quoted a statement made by USAID Office of Population director Reimert Ravenholt in a 1977 St. Louis Post-Dispatch interview. Ravenholt said that we should aim for sterilization . . . . Continue Reading »
Deepak Lal ( In Praise of Empires: Globalization and Order ) argues that after WW II, the US missed the opportunity to adopt unilateral free trade policies, as Britain did in the 19th century. “Rather than follow the correct British policy of adopting unilateral free trade and then allowing . . . . Continue Reading »
In his World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (A John Hope Franklin Center Bo) , Immanuel Wallerstein argues that the modern world-system is fundamentally a capitalist economic system, the states being within in. On this model, he explains why the various efforts at modern world-empire (Charles V, . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
