The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community - Brossura

Marglin, Stephen A.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0674047222 ISBN 13: 9780674047228

Casa editrice: Harvard Univ Pr, 2010

Riassunto

See "Stephen Marglin on the Future of Capitalism" at FORA.tv.

Economists celebrate the market as a device for regulating human interaction without acknowledging that their enthusiasm depends on a set of half-truths: that individuals are autonomous, self-interested, and rational calculators with unlimited wants and that the only community that matters is the nation-state. However, as Stephen Marglin argues, market relationships erode community. In the past, for example, when a farm family experienced a setback--say the barn burned down--neighbors pitched in. Now a farmer whose barn burns down turns, not to his neighbors, but to his insurance company. Insurance may be a more efficient way to organize resources than a community barn raising, but the deep social and human ties that are constitutive of community are weakened by the shift from reciprocity to market relations.

Marglin dissects the ways in which the foundational assumptions of economics justify a world in which individuals are isolated from one another and social connections are impoverished as people define themselves in terms of how much they can afford to consume. Over the last four centuries, this economic ideology has become the dominant ideology in much of the world. Marglin presents an account of how this happened and an argument for righting the imbalance in our lives that this ideology has fostered.

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Recensione:

Stephen Marglin makes a powerful and convincing argument for how thinking like an economist undermines community. Suddenly, the choices of those who reject global capitalism seem far more reasonable, because the globalization of capital brings with it the economistic thinking that destroys local values, forcing us to choose between material prosperity and spiritual health. Yet this tension is made invisible by a pseudo-universal ideology about human nature. Marglin thus provides a persuasive foundation for the Politics of Meaning. Tikkun 20080301 Marglin's demonstration of the relationship between mainstream economics and the destruction of communities is seductive, convincing, and well documented. -- Danny Lang Irish Times 20080324 This is an exceptionally learned, uncompromisingly contrarian critique of markets and economics by a member of the Department of Economics at Harvard University. Stephen Marglin emphasizes the costs of market transactions and blames economics for supplying the associated frame of reference. The Dismal Science is patently the result of a lifetime of reading and cogitating about conceptual issues related to market exchanges and economists' approaches to them. Some historical background is given but what is mainly offered is extended commentary on the history of thought and on everyday practice. --Eric Jones EH.NET

L'autore:

Stephen A. Marglin is Walter Barker Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Harvard Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0674047222
• ISBN 13: 9780674047228
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 359