Free Trade Reimagined : The World Division of Labor and the Method of Economics

by Unger, Roberto Mangabeira

• ISBN13: 9781400827855
• ISBN10: 140082785X
• Copyright: 2010-01-24
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Free Trade Reimaginedbegins with a sustained criticism of the heart of the emerging world economy, the theory and practice of free trade. Roberto Mangabeira Unger does not, however, defend protectionism against free trade. Instead, he attacks and revises the terms on which the traditional debate between free traders and protectionists has been joined.Unger's intervention in this major contemporary debate serves as a point of departure for a proposal to rethink the basic ideas with which we explain economic activity. He suggests, by example as well as by theory, a way of understanding contemporary economies that is both more realistic and more revealing of hidden possibilities for transformation than are the established forms of economics.One message of the book is that we need not choose between accepting and rejecting globalization; we can have a different globalization. Traditional free trade doctrine rests on shaky empirical and theoretical ground. Unger takes a new approach to show when international trade is likely to be useful or harmful to the socially inclusive economic growth that every nation wants. Another message is that the movement of people and ideas is more important than the movement of things and money, and that freedom to change the institutions defining a market economy is just as important as freedom to exchange goods on the basis of those institutions.Free Trade Reimaginedranges broadly within and outside economics. Presenting technical issues in plain language, it appeals to the general reader. It puts a disciplined imagination in the service of rebellion against the dictatorship of no alternatives that characterizes life and thought today.

Table of Contents

Themes and Scope of this Book	p. 1
	p. 7
Troubles: The Enigmas of Free Trade Familiar Problems, Disturbing Solutions	p. 7
The History of Free Trade and Protection: Subversive Lessons	p. 15
The Authority of Free Trade Doctrine: Reasons Amounting to Objections	p. 20
	p. 25
Troubles: The Incompleteness of Comparative Advantage The Doctrine of Comparative Advantage	p. 25
Incompleteness: Indeterminacy Resulting from Failure to Justify Unique Assignments of Comparative Advantage	p. 28
Incompleteness: Confusion Resulting from Uncertainty about the Limits of Our Power Collectively to Shape Comparative Advantage	p. 36
Incompleteness: Embarrassment Resulting from the Assumption that the World Is Divided into Sovereign States	p. 44
Beyond Incompleteness: The Sham Similarity between Postmarginalist Economics and Physics	p. 51
Condemned to Eternal Infancy: Implications of the Method Inaugurated by Marginalism	p. 56
A Note Relating Ideas in this Book to the Dominant Tradition of Thinking about Comparative Advantage	p. 65
	p. 77
Ideas In Search of a Point of View	p. 77
Specialization and Discovery:When Competition Inhibits Self-Transformation	p. 78
Politics over Economics:When Restraints on Trade Imply No Surrender to Special Interests or Costly Dogmas	p. 81
Order and Revision:When Free Trade Strengthens the Capacity for Self-Transformation	p. 87
Alternative Free Trade, Alternative Globalizations: The Market Liberated from the Doctrine of the Market	p. 90
The Division of Labor Reimagined and Remade: From the Pin Factory to the Factory of Innovation	p. 95
A Central Conception:Mind against Context	p. 100
	p. 110
Theses
Nature of These Theses	p. 110
The Thesis of Relative Advantage	p. 110
The Thesis of Politics over Economics	p. 138
The Thesis of Self-Revision	p. 150
	p. 166
Proposals
From an Analysis to a Program	p. 166
The World Trade Regime and Its Reconstruction	p. 167
Free Trade Reformed: The Reconciliation of Alternatives	p. 179
Free Trade Reformed: Experimenting with the Form of the Market Economy	p. 185
Free Trade Reformed: Free Movement of Things and Money Chastened, Free Movement of People and Ideas Enhanced	p. 193
Free Trade Reformed: From Wage Slavery to Free Labor	p. 198
The Troubles of Free Trade and the Possibilities of Economics	p. 213
Name Index	p. 223
Subject Index	p. 225
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