The Rise Of Economic Individualism

Excerpt from Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism: A Criticism of Max Weber and His School This book is an attempt to provide a more realistic treatment than has been found hitherto of a topic which has of late years been widely discussed. It is an attempt to use a historical instead of a sociological method to solve historical problems. It was first written in 1928 - 9 as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Cambridge, from material mostly collected during the tenure of a research Studentship at Emmanuel College. It was written in such leisure time as I was able to afford while lecturing at the University of Leeds, and has now been revised and rewritten in leisure moments at Cape Town. Access to libraries has been a little difficult during the actual period of writing, and I am conscious that there are some gaps in my bibliography. I regret especially my non-access to certain German works and Continental periodicals. Despite this, I venture to claim that my essay does make some new contributions to the literature of the subject. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Individualism has been one of the driving forces in the rise of modern capitalism, and methodological individualism has been dominant in social science for many years. In this paradigm the economy is seen as a machine to routinize production and improve efficiency, and the discipline of economics has come to focus on control and automation. Recent innovations in natural and social sciences, however, indicate a shift in thinking away from individualism and towards interconnectedness. The End of Individualism and the Economy: Emerging Paradigms of Connection and Community traces the origins of “the individual” in history, philosophy, economics, and social science. Drawing from linguistic philosophy, there is increasing attention to language as a social substrate for all institutions, including money and the market. One irony is that the individual is a key term, related to distinct institutions and associated expertise; that is, the individual is social. The book explores the influence of individualism in the subversion of class consciousness, the view of impersonality as a virtue, and the rise of financialization. The founding assumption of economics, the rational autonomous individual with exogenous tastes, undercuts social solidarity and blocks awareness of interconnections and interdependencies. The text looks forward and embraces the new paradigms and alternative forms of governance, economics, and science which can be developed based on collectives and communities, with new values, frameworks, and world views. This work is suitable for academics, students, scholars, and researchers with an interest in economic and social collectives and methodological individualism, as well as those studying the connections between economics and other disciplines in the social and natural sciences.

This book studies nineteenth-century American individualism and its relationship to the simultaneous rise of the market economy as articulated in the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William Graham Sumner. The argument of the book is that these thinkers offer distinct visions of individualism that reflect their respective understandings of the market, and provide thoughtful and insightful perspectives upon the promise and peril of this economic and social order. Looking back to Emerson, Thoreau, and Sumner furnishes valuable insights about the history of American political and social thought, as well as about the complexity of one of the most basic and prevalent relationships of modern life: that between the individual and the institutional complex of the market.

“These essays . . . bring great learning and . . . intelligence to bear upon economic and social issues of central importance to our era.” —Henry Hazlitt, Newsweek In this collection of writings, Nobel laureate Friedrich A. Hayek discusses topics from moral philosophy and the methods of the social sciences to economic theory as different aspects of the same central issue: free markets versus socialist planned economies. First published in the 1930s and 40s, these essays continue to illuminate the problems faced by developing and formerly socialist countries. F. A. Hayek, recipient of the Medal of Freedom in 1991 and winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1974, taught at the University of Chicago, the University of London, and the University of Freiburg. Among his other works published by the University of Chicago Press is The Road to Serfdom, now available in a special fiftieth anniversary edition. “There is much interesting and valuable material in this meaty . . . book which must ultimately help the world make up its mind on a vital issue: to plan or not to plan?” —S. E. Harris, The New York Times “Those who disagree with him cannot afford to ignore him . . . This is especially true of a book like the present one.” —George Soule, Nation