A Moral Political Economy

Economies - and the government institutions that support them - reflect a moral and political choice, a choice we can make and remake. Since the dawn of industrialization and democratization in the late eighteenth century, there has been a succession of political economic frameworks, reflecting changes in technology, knowledge, trade, global connections, political power, and the expansion of citizenship. The challenges of today reveal the need for a new moral political economy that recognizes the politics in political economy. It also requires the redesign of our social, economic, and governing institutions based on assumptions about humans as social beings rather than narrow self-serving individualists. This Element makes some progress toward building a new moral political economy by offering both a theory of change and some principles for institutional (re)design.

A/Moral Economics is an interdisciplinary historical study that examines the ways which social "science" of economics emerged through the discourse of the literary, namely the dominant moral and fictional narrative genres of early and mid-Victorian England. In particular, this book argues that the classical economic theory of early-nineteenth-century England gained its broad cultural authority not directly, through the well- known texts of such canonical economic theorists as David Ricardo, but indirectly through the narratives constructed by Ricardo's popularizers John Ramsey McCulloch and Harriet Martineau. By reexamining the rhetorical and institutional contexts of classical political economy in the nineteenth century, A/Moral Economics repositions the popular writings of both supporters and detractors of political economy as central to early political economists' bids for a cultural voice. The now marginalized economic writings of McCulloch, Martineau, Henry Mayhew, and John Ruskin, as well as the texts of Charles Dickens and J. S. Mill, must be read as constituting in part the entities they have been read as merely criticizing. It is this repressed moral logic that resurfaces in a range of textual contradictions--not only in the writings of Ricardo's supporters, but, ironically, in those of his critics as well.

'The Political Economy of Virtue' offers an interpretation of political economy in the second half of the 18th century. It covers the key turning points in the development of French political economy.

The Political Economy of Business Ethics in East Asia: A Historical and Comparative Perspective deals with modes of ethical persuasion in both public and private sectors of the national economy in East Asia, from the periods of the fourteenth century, to the modern era. Authors in this volume ask how, and why, governments in pre-modern Joseon Korea, modern Korea, and modern Japan used moral persuasion of different kinds in designing national economic institutions. Case studies demonstrate that the concept of modes of exchange first developed by John Lie (1992) provides a more convincing explanation on the evolution of pre-modern and modern economic institutions compared with Marx’s modes of production as historically-specific social relations, or Smith’s free market as a terminal stage of human economic development. The pre-modern and modern cases presented in this volume reveal that different modes of exchange have coexisted throughout human history. Furthermore, business ethics or corporate social responsibility is not a purely European economic ideology because manorial, market, entrepreneurial, and mercantilist moral persuasions had widely been used by state rulers and policymakers in East Asia for their programs of advancing dissimilar modes of exchange. In a similar vein, the domination of the market and entrepreneurial modes in the twenty-first century world is also complemented by other competing modes of change, such as state welfarism, public sector economies, and protectionism. Compares Chinese, Japanese, and Korean business ethics from a comparative and historical context Explores recent theoretical approaches to capitalist development in modern history in non-Western regions Discusses the theoretical usefulness of new institutionalism, modes of exchange, and neoclassical discussions of business ethics Evaluates historical texts in their own languages in its attempt to compare Chinese, Japanese, and Korean business ethics in the pre-modern and modern times

Since the beginning of capitalism--with its mathematical equations and laws of supply and demand--its champions have claimed that studying the moral aspects of the theory interfere with its natural function. Yet, as this ethicist and theologian argues, economies are always deeply integrated in social relationships, in morality, and in ethics. Using historical examples, the book argues that when economically hard-pressed people come together to defend their common rights, they are giving voice to the principle of a moral economy that does not cheat the lower classes. Particular attention is paid to the 18th-century English food riots, the spontaneous resistance of 20th-century Malaysian farmers, and the North Americans who picketed the homes of Wall Street bankers in 2008 and 2009.

Activation policies which promote and enforce labour market participation continue to proliferate in Europe and constitute the reform blueprint from centre-left to centre-right, as well as for most international organizations. Through an in-depth study of four major reforms in Denmark and France, this book maps how co-existing ideas are mobilised to justify, criticise and reach activation compromises and how their morality sediments into the instruments governing the unemployed. By rethinking the role of ideas and morality in policy changes, this book illustrates how the moral economy of activation leads to a permanent behaviourist testing of the unemployed in public debate as well as in local jobcentres.