‘Commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government,’ wrote Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations, ‘and with them, the liberty and security of individuals.’ However, Philipp Rössner shows how, when looked at in the face of history, it has usually been the other way around.
This book follows the development of capitalism from the Middle Ages through the industrial revolution to modern day, casting new light on the areas where pre-modern political economies of growth and development made a difference. It shows how order and governance provided the foundation for prosperity, growth and the wealth of nations.
Written for scholars and students of economic history, this is a pioneering new study that debunks the neoliberal origin myth of how capitalism came into the world.
Do you know where your money is? More importantly, do you know what your money is doing?
Most of us feel confident that we know what money is. But few of us feel confident in taking responsibility for what our money does. We hand over the power of money to banks and mainstream finance with real, often damaging, consequences for people and planet.
A unique collaboration between an academic and a practitioner, this book tells the story of money, from ancient Athens to the Bitcoin revolution, to explain how crowdfunding is the way for people to reclaim the power of their money in pursuit of a fairer and greener society.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND
Made famous by the Enlightenment thinker Adam Smith, the concept of an ‘invisible hand’ might be taken to imply that a government that governs least governs the best, from the viewpoint of society. Here an invisible hand appears to represent unfettered market forces.
Drawing from this much-contested notion, Mittermaier indicates why such a view represents only one side of the story and distinguishes between what he calls pragmatic and dogmatic free marketeers.
Published posthumously, with new contributions by Daniel Klein, Rod O’Donnell and Christopher Torr, this book outlines Mittermaier’s main thesis and his relevance for ongoing debates within economics, politics, sociology and philosophy.
This ambitious collection follows the evolution of capitalism from its origins in 13th-century European towns to its 16th-century expansion into Asia, Africa and South America and on to the global capitalism of modern day.
Written by distinguished historians and social scientists, the chapters examine capitalism and its critics and the level of variation and convergence in its operation across locations. The authors illuminate the aspects of capitalism that have encouraged, but also limited, social responsibility and environmental sustainability.
Covering times, places and topics that have often been overlooked in the existing literature, this important contribution to the field of economic history charts the most comprehensive chronology of capitalism to date.
bearer a financial loss, depending upon whom they faced in future transactions and payments. Attempts were made to centralize monetary policy and create a true imperial currency for the Holy Roman Empire during the first half of the 16th century. But these efforts came to naught. 57 The German lands therefore represent a good case in point about competition and institutional arbitrage, often considered beneficial for countries’ economic performance and key to European superiority over other less politically fragmented world regions. 58 The history of money suggests
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behaviour patterns. A process of policy transfer and entrepreneurialism transported those themes to the UK and fed into what would become the CTF. However, again, there is a larger historical or genealogical backdrop against which all this should be placed. In her social history of money, Zeilizer (1997: 135) records how, in the US in the 19th century, charity workers were fearful of the misuse to which charitable aid might be put: ‘Driven by an unrelenting commitment to transform the moral world of the poor, charity workers felt entitled to control not only
truly at stake, can it really be credible to argue still that a few enlightened financiers are better at deciding upon the best use of money? Should people themselves not be ‘crowded in’ to have more of a say on those financial matters that concern them all? Digging for coins There is a risk that in digging through the history of money, all you find are coins. The arguments rehearsed throughout this chapter have aimed to underlie a set of different prescriptions for a better finance system, prescriptions that are reflected in ancient societies with a different
&focal=none [Accessed 20 December 2020]. Battilossi , S. , Cassis , Y . and Yago , K. ( 2020 ) Handbook of the History of Money and Currency , Singapore: Springer. Beckert , S. ( 2015 ) Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism , London: Penguin Books. Bell , A.R. , Brooks , C. and Dryburgh , P. ( 2007 ) The English Wool Market, c. 1230 – 1327 , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bell , A. , Brooks , C. and Moore , T. ( 2017 ) ‘The non-use of money in the middle a ges’, in N. Mayhew (ed) Peter Spufford’s Money and Its
The expression ‘the invisible hand’ has become an aphorism for the idea that the pursuit of private ends by a large number of independent individuals leads to a situation that is beneficial to all. It is not clear whether, according to proponents of this idea, the beneficial guidance of the invisible hand may always be relied upon, provided only that man does not try to impose his own ideas upon the overall state of economic affairs, or whether the conditions under which the invisible hand may be expected to operate have to be created deliberately. In the first case, the social and economic institutions of a market economy would be in a sense natural whereas in the second case they would be an ideal of a possible form of social and economic organization, which, like and together with other ideals, one has to strive to realize as best one can. Though the matter may be seen in the end to be more complex, it may be said that those who incline to the former view hold a dogmatic and those who incline to the latter a pragmatic view on free markets. One of the aims of the study is to examine certain free-market arguments and to characterize, formulate and assess the dogmatic and pragmatic positions respectively. A working criterion for making the distinction is discussed in Chapter 2 and the two views are assessed in some detail in Chapter 9. The pragmatic position is particularly difficult to articulate, but it is suggested that it is the more tenable of the two.
