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Economic struggles and economic development: Transformations in the development of a theme
Abstract
This dissertation develops a Hobbesian reading of the texts of Adam Smith and Karl Marx on economic development. The individualist tradition in social theory starts with the assumption that the social behavior of individuals is driven by self-interest. Thomas Hobbes deduced from this that granting freedom to individuals would inevitably lead to social chaos and generalized misery. Smith argued that granting freedom to individuals is a necessary condition of further economic development. He admitted that freedom leads to struggles over who is to control a society's resources and surplus product. This wastes resources and inhibits economic development. But attempts to prevent such struggles cannot succeed. The solution is to create social structures where how well individuals do in such struggles accurately reflects the extent to which they use resources productively and innovate better methods of production. This can be done by making everyone dependent on markets and forcing everyone (entrepreneurs, workers and consumers) to compete against everyone else in markets. Marx struggled with and transformed the concepts and arguments of Smith, especially those concerning struggles relating to the production, distribution and uses of the surplus product. He argued that the Smithian process of economic development is also a Hobbesian process of exploitation of the workers who produce the wealth. He struggled to analyze the various ways in which the processes of economic development and exploitation mold and shape each other, treating each as a contributing condition of existence of the other, and neither as the determining cause. There is an ongoing debate and tension within the individualist tradition between a neo-Smithian approach (the structure and distribution of property rights are the essential keys to understanding any historical situation) and a neo-Hobbesian approach (the types and distribution of power are the essential keys). Despite Marx's attempt to go beyond this dichotomy and construct an antiessentialist analysis of how the various aspects of historical situations mutually overdetermine each other, a similar dichotomy has dominated the Marxian tradition after Marx.
Subject Area
Economic history|Economics
Recommended Citation
Sinisi, John A, "Economic struggles and economic development: Transformations in the development of a theme" (1992). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9305900.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9305900