Impurities all around? Some thoughts on Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Economics & Utopia: Why the Learning Economy is not the End of History

Abstract

In his wide-ranging book, Geoff Hodgson fights his battle against the view that there is no future anymore for expounding and discussing utopian ideas about ideal socio-economic systems. The notion that we have reached the end of history, that the ideological clash between different utopian designs has ended in a glorious victory of the liberal--democratic capitalist system, Hodgson argues, is seriously flawed. For Hodgson this does not imply, however, that traditional contenders, such as the socialist utopian design, have not yet been defeated. The socialist utopia, with its characteristic market phobia, has effectively been dismantled. Hodgson goes beyond this, however, in arguing that the lesson to be learnt from recent geopolitical developments rather is that all pure utopian blueprints, the traditional socialist left-wing and neo-liberal, market individualistic right-wing utopias included, are unfeasible. Pace free marketeers Hodgson holds that there never has been, and there will never be a pure liberal --democratic capitalist system. What we always had and will never get rid of instead are impure systems. This does not render utopian thinking obsolete or superfluous. The future is not pre-ordained and ideas about a better world will continue to have an impact on how society will develop further. Lest we accept that unexamined ideas sneak in through the backdoor, we'd better engage in an explicit and critical debate about these ideas. More or less between the lines Hodgson indicates that such a debate has to be guided by a general notion of human flourishing. Meeting human needs and facilitating self-actualization of individuals are the summum bonum for Hodgson. To this end Hodgson puts forward his own evotopia in which substantial investments are made in human education and training. I can only hope that this somewhat captures the major ingredients in Hodgson's book. So many topics are addressed in the book that it is impossible in a review article to do justice to them all. In this review article I take the liberty to pick out themes and ideas that I have a special interest in. I shall mainly concentrate on economic theory and the light it is (un)able to shed on institutional variety in socio-economic systems. This means that I may not even touch upon what Hodgson takes to be the heart of the endeavour under consideration here. On the other hand, I draw some consolation from the fact that just like me Hodgson (perhaps surprisingly, given the overall theme of the book) is mostly concerned with the nature of economic analysis and its limits in coming to grips with issues that Hodgson puts center stage (Hodgson 1999: 11). (1) A prominent theme in the book is that both mainstream economics and Marxism tend to glance over the actually existing variety and diversity within socio-economic systems such as capitalism (or market society). Not only is the market itself an institution, different types of market institutions are possible (p. 94). This already defies proclamations that with present world-wide system of liberal-democratic capitalism we have reached the end of history. This is so for two reasons. First, since actually existing capitalist systems display considerable diversity, it is misleading to talk of our present world-wide system of liberal-democratic And, second, it is highly probable that the forms of capitalism that have actualized so far do not exhaust the full range of possible variants of capitalism. I find all this congenial. But it seems to me that there are various ways in which Hodgson uses the notions of variety and diversity. I think it would be helpful to keep them apart. First of all, I think we should distinguish more clearly than Hodgson does himself between variety in context en variety in substance. Context by definition refers to something outside the system, something in which the system is situated or embedded. …