Economics and Utopia: Why the Learning Economy is Not the End of History

by Hodgson; Geoffrey M.

• ISBN13: 9780415196857
• ISBN10: 041519685X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 1998-12-22
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, many have proclaimed not just the death of communism, but also the obsolescence of all forms of utopian thinking. Geoffrey Hodgson argues that it is still possible to imagine new economic alternatives to the current system, and that utopian thinking serves as a necessary aspect of developing alternative solutions to present problems. He places the focus on the relationship between learning and knowledge and on the context of different economic models. This book goes beyond conventional wisdom to open new horizons of economic thought.

Author Biography

Geoffrey M. Hodgson is Reader in Economics at the Judge Institute of Management Studies, University of Cambridge.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. xiii
Preface	p. xv
Introduction	p. 1
Some remarks on utopia	p. 4
The theme of this book	p. 9
Utopian economics and the economics of nowhere	p. 11
Visions and illusions
Socialism and the Limits to Innovation	p. 15
The emergence and meaning of the term 'socialism'	p. 17
The very late inception of socialist economic pluralism	p. 24
The problem of socialism and diversity	p. 28
The socialist calculation debate	p. 33
A proposal for 'democratic planning'	p. 42
Computers to the rescue?	p. 52
Can socialism learn?	p. 59
The Absolutism of Market Individualism	p. 62
The limits to contracts and markets	p. 65
The individual as being the best judge of her needs	p. 69
Learning a challenge to market individualism	p. 74
Market individualism and the iron cage of liberty	p. 80
The alleged ubiquity of the market	p. 85
Organisations and the conditions for innovation and learning	p. 88
Market individualism and the intolerance of structural diversity	p. 90
Evaluating different types of market institution	p. 93
The blindness of existing theory
The Universality of Mainstream Economics	p. 101
The universalist claims of mainstream economics	p. 103
Univeralism versus realism in Hayek's economics	p. 105
The hidden, ideological specifics	p. 107
The limits of contractarian analysis	p. 110
Actor and structure	p. 113
Karl Marx and the Triumph of Capitalism	p. 117
The hidden, ahistorical universals	p. 122
The problem of necessary impurities	p. 124
Actor and structure	p. 130
Institutionalism and Varieties of Capitalism	p. 133
Veblen's critique of Marx	p. 133
Specificity and universality	p. 140
Institutions as units of analysis	p. 142
Variety and the impurity principle	p. 146
Varieties of actually existing capitalism	p. 148
The spectres of globalisation and convergence	p. 152
Back to the future
Contract and Capitalism	p. 157
The definition of capitalism revisited	p. 161
The nature and importance of the employment relationship	p. 164
The incompleteness of the employment contract	p. 169
Buying tuna and contesting exchange	p. 172
Knowledge and Employment	p. 179
The advance of complexity and knowledge	p. 181
Where Marxism got it wrong	p. 184
Complexity and computer technology	p. 186
An alternative route: the omega scenario	p. 188
The Arrow problem, the Knight paradox and the dissolution of control	p. 189
Touching the intangible	p. 193
Collective knowledge and corporate culture	p. 197
Some implications for the employment contract	p. 203
The end of Capitalism?	p. 205
Libertarianism versus responsibility	p. 210
Beyond capitalism: the epsilon scenario	p. 211
Beyond the epsilon scenario	p. 216
Are worker knowco-ops efficient?	p. 220
The Learning Frontier	p. 228
Knowledge and skills	p. 228
Some Normative and Policy Issues	p. 240
The foundations of evotopia	p. 241
Evotopia and the learning economy	p. 246
Information overload: filtering and accreditation	p. 253
Complexity, information and ethics	p. 255
The future of contract and corporation	p. 259
Final remarks	p. 261
Notes	p. 263
Bibliography	p. 291
Index	p. 327
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.