Economic Interpretation Of History Research Articles

Charles Austin Beard’s Economic Interpretation of the American Century through His Journalistic Writings

ABSTRACT Beginning with the publication of An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States in 1913, Charles Austin Beard gained fame and notoriety as a historian by writing about the power of money over politics and policy. In his analysis of American history, he did not make an exception for the Second World War or the Cold War. Those conflicts, too, had an economic subtext. Yet, in his two most famous books dealing with the dawn of the American Century, American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932–1940: A Study in Responsibilities (1946) and President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: A Study in Appearances and Realities (1948), he focused narrowly on Roosevelt’s foreign policy decisions. These books contributed to the impression that in his later years he had moved beyond the economic interpretation of history. A leading public intellectual, Beard also wrote numerous magazine articles about the motives behind America’s interwar, wartime, and post-war foreign policy. His journalistic first draft of history crucially supplements the last books that he published and shows him to have retained the view that there is no politics without economics.

Degredados, Their Human Agency, and Micro Institutions in Colonial Brazil: An Institutionalist Reinterpretation

:Institutions are widely recognized as determinants of economic development. However, institutional economists often overlook pertinent historical incidents in their search for broad patterns. At times, this search oversimplifies truly complex phenomena. In light of this, we apply a micro-institutional analysis to explain the success of colonial Brazil's early settlements as a mix of accident and design. By doing so, we stress the limitations that can result when applying an aggregate institutional interpretation of economic history and development. We also apply the principal-agent model and its main feature – risk-sharing – to an extreme case that involves settlers and natives risking their lives, while Portuguese principals sought to reduce transaction costs in an important and resource-rich colony.

Does hedonic price indexing change our interpretation of economic history? Evidence from Swedish electrification

Rapid price decreases for ICT products in the 1990s have been largely attributed to the introduction of hedonic price indexes. Would hedonic price indexing also have had large effects on measured price and productivity during earlier technological breakthroughs? This article investigates the impact of hedonic and matched model methods on historical data for electric motors in Sweden from 1900–35. The results show rapidly decreasing prices in the industry producing electric motors in the 1920s. However, the price decreases of electric motors in the 1920s were not on a par with price decreases for ICT equipment in the 1990s, even if hedonic indexing is used.

Marx and Schumpeter: A Comparison of their Theories of Development

This paper challenges Paul Samuelson's claim that the development theories of Marx and Schumpeter have little in common. There are indeed broad similarities between the two theories, arising principally from Schumpeter's use of Marx's method (with some interesting modifications), which he calls the ‘economic interpretation of history’. This discussion leads us to ask if we can incorporate into Marx's method some of the insights suggested by Schumpeter's modifications. We show that Marx's method is enriched by the insertion into it of an explicit, although limited, role of the individual (human agency). The paper then turns to the differences between the two theories, concerning the theory of value and the analysis of social classes. We find an unresolved tension in Schumpeter's system of thought, between his attempt to construct a model of a dynamic, evolving economy on Marxian lines (albeit an alternative to Marx's model), and his emphasis on the role of the individual, which he inserts into an essentially static, Walrasian model.

Political Prophecy in Contemporary American Literature: The Left-Conservative Vision of Norman Mailer

AbstractPopular and prize-winning writer Norman Mailer has advanced a view of American politics and society that he calls “left conservatism.” This paper analyzes elements of Mailer's critique and describes how the parts fit together. Special attention is given to his interpretation of economic history and social psychology, his vision of moral health that he associates with the term “hipster,” and his fear of a new political mentality in the United States that he conveys through a neologism, the “wad.” The paper closes with a sketch of the ways Mailer's left conservatism both dovetails with and departs from the concerns and arguments of other contemporary American conservative thinkers.

Caio Prado Júnior na Cultura Política Brasileira. RAIMUNDO SANTOS: Rio de Janeiro: MAUAD, 2001.

Marxist thought in 20th-century Brazil has remained in consistent dialogue with historical, sociological and anthropological theories of national history and character, as well as with the organized political struggle over Brazil's present and future. The work of historian Caio Prado Júnior (1907-1990), best known for his landmark treatise: A Formação Económica do Brasil Contemporânea (1945), has been highly influential in both of these ongoing processes. Caio Prado's economic interpretation of history, which viewed Brazil's political, economic and racial problems as a consequence of colonial settlement patterns driven by global Euro-commerce, challenged alternative explanations by his contemporaries (notably Gilberto Freyre's celebration of Brazilian cultural hybridity due to the combined effects of miscegenation, a tropical climate and a relatively benign form of slavery). Similarly, Caio Prado's adaptation of classic Marxist theory served as a constant point of reference in the complex development of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB). Political scientist Raimundo Santos's recent biography, Caio Prado Júnior na Cultura Política Brasileira (2001), delves deeply into Caio Prado's intellectual development, bringing this potent and influential thinker into dialogue with contemporary debates within the Brazilian left.

New Estimates of Australian GDP, 1861–1948/49

This article uses recently available historical data to compile new estimates of gross domestic product by sector for Australia as an alternative to the estimates by Colin Clark and Noel Butlin. These data are then compared with Clark’s and Butlin’s series, and with historical experience, as set out by Coghlan in Labour and Industry in Australia (1918). We caution against accepting Butlin’s results, and question whether his data, even when reliable, can form the basis for a new interpretation of economic history.

What is Rationality? A New Reading of Veblen's Critique of Utilitarian Hedonism

As is widely known, in the methodological parts of his literary output, Thorstein Veblen wages a continuous war against the prevalent presupposi tions of economic science, which he finds, partly ad hoc, partly based on dated knowledge.1 His summarizing caption for them is utilitarian hedonism, and he finds them ubiquitous in all creeds and schools of economics, though most so in the classical and neoclassical ways of thought.2 In Veblen's interpretation of economic history, a turn to the worse takes place in the economic theory that comes after Adam Smith: the analytical focus switches from production onto consumption. Concomitantly with this analytical switch, the hedonistic presuppositions of Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian phi losophy and psychology are accepted as the main parameters of human nature (Veblen 1899-1900: II). "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure," Bentham had said, and this has been accepted without questions, in the bulk of economic theory since then. The least one can say is that Veblen is not attacking a straw man here. Indeed, the utilitarian presuppositions were sometimes not accepted unwittingly, they rather were deliberately chosen for economic analysis, especially by the neoclassical school. Of Stanley Jevons it has been said that he "begins with a theory of pleasure and pain based on Bentham," (Roll 1992: p. 347), and there were others to do so. And if these suppositions were met with suspicion, neoclassical economists were quick to note that the reference to pleasure and pain was only a necessary figure of speech. It was an abstraction that for analytical purposes had to be made in economic discourse. Alfred Marshall goes to pains on this. As he says, "It has unfortu nately happened that the customary uses of economic terms have sometimes

From Marx to Madison: The Seligman Connection in Charles Beard's Constitutional Theory

Since the publication of Charles Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, conservative scholars have denounced it as "Marxist," while radical scholars have often embraced it as an exemplary piece of Marxist political theory. Yet Beard steadfastly denied that his Economic Interpretation was Marxist in its origin or import. Many scholars have dismissed Beard's disclaimers as a polemical maneuver, but this article asserts that they should be taken seriously. The author contends that Beard's historiography and political thought is rooted in the little known work of E. R. A. Seligman, whose The Economic Interpretation of History is the key to understanding how Beard's methodology differs from the historical materialism of Marx.

Economics at Columbia: Recollections of the Early 1930S

Two articles, one by W. Allen Wallis on the Mathematical Statistics Group at Columbia University during World War II,1 and the other by Edward Shils on his graduate student days at the University of Chicago in the 1930s,2 have encouraged me to set down my recollections of the Economics Department at Columbia Univer sity during the early 1930s when Wesley Clair Mitchell and John Maurice Clark gave it luster, if not leadership. Their peers in the economics profession at large had selected Mitchell and Clark as the first and second recipients respec tively of the John Bates Clark medal awarded by the American Economic Association to those who had made the greatest contributions to the advance of the discipline. Within three short years at the end of the 1920s the center of gravity of the Economics Department at Columbia shifted radically. In 1928 Henry Moore, an early contributor to mathematical-statistical studies of economics, retired and disappeared from the academic scene where he had never played a prominent role. In 1930 Edwin R. A. Seligman, the long-term chairman of the department suffered a mild heart attack; he retired to be succeeded by Henry Seager, a specialist in labor, who died that same summer while on a visit to Eastern Europe. Seligman was a man of parts. Three decades earlier he had written a little book, The Economic Interpretation of History which pro vided academic respectability to American scholars who sought to deal seriously with Karl Marx.3 He had a long list of contributions to public finance and had played an important role in getting the federal income tax law onto the books. A man of independent means, he supported many students, especially foreign students who ran out of funds. Just prior to his retirement he had completed a major inquiry into consumer credit, a project financed by General Motors, for which it was reported he had received a fee of $250,000 ($2 million in 1989 dollars!) Seligman concluded that there was nothing wrong from the viewpoint of economics or ethics in consumers buying on credit. A Jew by birth, and a leading member of the Ethical Culture Society, Seligman was much conflicted about his Jewishness, especially when confronting those of Zionist persuasion. He once told me that he had contributed to the University of Calcutta but, as a matter of principle, refused to make a donation to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Aware of the anti-Semitism in elite U.S. universities, he was concerned about the prospects of young Jewish academicians. One amusing episode: After his retirement, he continued to come to the campus and sought to stay abreast of what was happening. I told him in one of our frequent meetings of a talented new student, Moses Abramovitz. He asked how he spelled his name. When I indicated it was with a v rather than a w, Seligman indicated great relief. The hard core of the old department in addition to Seligman, Seager and Moore in cluded Vladimir G. Simkhovitch who offered courses on socialism and economic history. Russian by birth and German by education, Simkhovitch, even with the perspective of time is not easy to characterize and even harder to evaluate. A collector of Chinese art and a grower of delphiniums in Perry, Maine, he was recognized as an expert in both fields. Most students, the bright as well as the dull, considered his lectures somewhat tedious dis traction from serious work on contemporary economics; they had little interest in his exhaustion of the soil explanation for the decline of Rome4 or his Edward Bernstein-modified critique of Karl Marx.5 But a few of us recognized V. G.'s insightfulness and over looked his failings, defects which included a proneness for character defamation and vindic tiveness as well as immature behavior toward female students.

The Social Economics of Hugo Eisenhart Gustav von Schmoller

Most contemporary economists feel ill at ease with respect to big topics — national economic organisation, interpretation of economic history, relations of economic and political power, origins and functions of economic institutions. The terrain is unsuitable for our tools. We find it hard to frame meaningful questions, much less to answer them. (James Tobin, Nobel Laureate)

Marx and Economic Determinism

Friends and enemies of Marx have caricatured his economic interpretation of history. They think that his celebrated preface of 1859 applies to universal history; we argue that it does not. With historical examples we show how Marx used his economic variables-technology, productive forces, and mode of production-in understanding the evolution of society. Was Marx a technological determinist? What does it mean to say that the economic base explains the superstructure "in the last analysis"? Does Marx's model of economic change help us to understand the history of ancient classical civilization? Is the materialist conception of history a theory or a method? These are some of the questions we consider.

Man as economic animal and man as praxis an Interpretation of Marx

The conception of man as an economic animal is implied by the view that economic production is the determining “factor” or “sphere” of man or society. Against this conception can be put another, that of man as praxis. This takes account of man as a creative being, capable of realizing his freedom through his own activity. In this article the theory of the determining role of the “economic factor”, and the theory of factors in general have been examined. The economic interpretation of history, a variant of the theory of factors, has been acknowledged as partly true for the self‐alienated man and society, but the theory of factors in any variant has been found inadequate as a general theory of man, or society. The possibility of freedom cannot be reduced to the fact that the determining roles played by “factors”, vary, or to the hope that the economic “factor” can be subordinated to a “better” one. Man's freedom consists in his resolving the conflict of “factors”, and in realizing himself as an integral cre...

Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx

In Karl Marx's early writing (first made available many years after his death) his economic interpretation of history and his concept of communism were set in a comprehensive philosophical framework. Marx's main preoccupation at this time was with man estranged from himself in an alienated world: a subjective, almost religious theme. Taking full account of these earlier writings, Robert Tucker critiques and reinterprets Marx's thought. He shows how its origins can be located in earlier German philosophers, in particular Kant, Hegel and Feuerbach. Reconstructing the genesis of Marxism in its founder's own mind, he clarifies Marx's mystifying contention that Marxism represented Hegelianism turned 'on its head'. He then presents a new interpretation, based on close textual analysis, of the relation between Marx's early philosophical system and the subsequent materialist conception of history as expounded in the later and best known writings of Marx and Engels. Against this background, Tucker presents Das Kapital as a work belonging to the post-Hegelian mythical development of Germany philosophy. Considering in turn the genesis of Marxism and the underlying continuity of his thought from the early writings to Das Kapital, Tucker shows the theme of alienation is central throughout. In the years since the book was first written, comments and criticism have encouraged Tucker to change his position somewhat. This is explained in a new introduction that goes beyond the interpretative enterprise of the rest of the book to assess Marx in relation to contemporary concerns: first it presents a critique of Marx's treatment of alienation and then it comments on the moot problem of the continuing relevance of his social and economic thought. On the latter point his views have matured and altered during the intervening years and he now finds the economic and social aspects of Marx's thought considerably more relevant than he did before.

The Role of Staple Industries in Canada's Economic Development

Applications of the staple approach by the late Harold Innis d by others influenced by Innis have produced many studies which, taken together, provide a remarkably coherent, plausible, and apparently consistent account of Canada's economic growth and history. In this paper I distinguish between the staple theory as a theory of economic development and as an economic interpretation of history and argue that the staple theory of Canada's economic development breaks down after 1820. In the conclusion I suggest an alternative, complementary approach to the study of the country's economic growth.

Sugar and the Hawaiian Revolution

HISTORIANS of the Hawaiian revolution of January 17, 1893, have often concerned themselves with the controversial question of the role of in the revolution. Writers inclined toward the economic interpretation of history have explained the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani and the establishment of the provisional government in terms of the need of the planters to find relief from the depression which engulfed the islands with the passage of the McKinley Tariff in 1890. This act erased the preferential treatment of Hawaiian in the American market by admitting all foreign duty free and by granting domestic producers a bounty of two cents a pound. The effect upon Hawaii had been severe, as the price of dropped from one hundred to sixty dollars a ton. Thus, Scott Nearing and Joseph Freeman cite as the prime cause of the trouble in Hawaii. They claim that only annexation and the imposition of duty on competing could have sufficed to restore Hawaiian prosperity in the 'nineties and that heavy property damage was avoided by the revolution, sponsored by American business men, supported by United States diplomatic representatives, and bulwarked by the new tariff act of 1894.' Following in this tradition, Charles and Mary Beard write that it was mainly that precipitated the crisis. In support they point to the testimony of a sugar planter from the island of Lanai, who stated that the causes of the revolution were simply two cents a pound on sugar-to get some treaty or arrangement with America.2 Further investigation, however, reveals that this sugar planter was actually Fred H. Hayselden, a British stock raiser, whose total investments in the islands amounted to $200 worth of stock in the Mutual Telephone Company of Oahu. He had been sheriff in Lanai at the time of the revolution and

Cotton as a World Power: a Study in the Economic Interpretation of History. By James A. B. Scherer, Ph.D., LL.D., President of Throop College of Technology. (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. 1917. Pp. 452. $2.00.)

<italic>Cotton as a World Power: a Study in the Economic Interpretation of History</italic>. By <sc>James A. B. Scherer</sc>, Ph.D., LL.D., President of Throop College of Technology. (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. 1917. Pp. 452. $2.00.)

Cotton as a World Power: A Study in the Economic Interpretation of History

Cotton as a World Power: A Study in the Economic Interpretation of History

Cotton as a World Power

Journal Article Cotton as a world power. A study in the economic interpretation of history. By James A. B. Sherer, Ph.D., LL.D., president of Throop college of technology. (New York: Frederick A. Stokes company, 1916. 452 p. $2.50 net) Get access Charles W. Ramsdell Charles W. Ramsdell Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 4, Issue 2, September 1917, Pages 234–236, https://doi.org/10.2307/1886991 Published: 01 September 1917

The Present Problems in the Economic Inter Pretation of History

The Present Problems in the Economic Inter Pretation of History