Means and Ends The Idea of Capital in the West, 1500-1970

by Boldizzoni, Francesco

• ISBN13: 9780230572577
• ISBN10: 023057257X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-11-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

"The idea of capital dominated the imagination of Western society throughout the era of its greatest economic development, from the Industrial Revolution up to the 1970s. Means and Ends provides a unique and comprehensive interpretation of this idea, examining it both within and outside a political economy framework, and tracing its rise and evolution from the sixteenth century through to the modern era. Based on a wealth of primary sources, this is a stimulating work of cultural and intellectual history which sheds new light on one of the guiding concepts of our age."--BOOK JACKET.

Author Biography

FRANCESCO BOLDIZZONI is Reader in the History of Economic Thought at Bocconi University, Milan, Italy, and a member of Clare Hall Cambridge, UK.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Capital as Money: The Emergence of Modernity	p. 8
Before capitalism: The prehistory of a word	p. 10
Middle Ages and Renaissance	p. 11
A modern disenchantment	p. 13
Economics and theology: The long sixteenth century	p. 17
The years of high theory	p. 21
Land and Labour, 1650-1800	p. 25
Money is the fat of the body-politick'	p. 26
The maieutics of production	p. 27
Agriculture as principle of wealth	p. 29
The primacy of nature in France	p. 31
'Art' and 'industry': The incubation of the English spirit	p. 35
The science of productivity	p. 37
Reproduction and Transition	p. 40
One rich economy but with no drive, another constantly on the move: France and Britain in the eighteenth century	p. 40
Money and the Physiocrats	p. 45
A system based on avarices	p. 47
The job of the capitalist	p. 50
A eulogy of finance	p. 52
Earnings on capital	p. 53
Progress and poverty: British thought at the start of the Industrial Revolution	p. 54
A (limited) vision of development	p. 56
Agriculture and manufacturing	p. 58
Circulating capital in Smith and Ricardo	p. 61
Industrial Maturity	p. 65
A new idea of capital	p. 66
Technology and accumulation	p. 68
Towards self-expansion of the system	p. 72
Ideas and reality: A quantitative view	p. 80
The Revolt of 1867	p. 84
The social nature of capital	p. 85
The form of capital: A phylogenetic approach	p. 87
The age of machinery I. Manufacturing and industry: Difference of kind, not of degree	p. 89
The age of machinery II. The destruction of the social fabric	p. 93
Primitive accumulation	p. 96
Revisions and self-interpretations: Marx and Anglo-Marxism	p. 98
The Atlantic Reaction	p. 108
The economic virtues of Victorian Britain	p. 109
The sentimental education of Marshall	p. 111
Accumulation of capital and civil progress	p. 112
The defence of capital in America	p. 116
The spectre of communism takes form	p. 117
Social Darwinism and predestination	p. 119
Distribution as a fact of nature: J.B. Clark	p. 121
The Continent, 1870-1938	p. 126
The legacy of the 'Austrias'	p. 128
German socialism	p. 133
Italy and France: An excursus	p. 138
The return of the Popes	p. 143
The Eastern border	p. 146
Keynes and After: Crisis and Continuity	p. 150
Britain's decline and the challenge of affluence	p. 151
Keynes and the Great Depression: A new economic ethics?	p. 153
The generation divide at Cambridge	p. 155
Accumulation as a moral duty: Joan Robinson	p. 158
Beginning and end of a controversy	p. 163
Where are we heading?	p. 167
Notes	p. 170
Index	p. 211
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