Ethics Of Capitalism Research Articles

The Protestant ethic strikes back: Open source developers and the ethic of capitalism

Free/Open Source software development has initiated new models and theories of social organization and immaterial labor in terms of a “hacker” culture. However, our survey of four developer communities shows that there is a continuum of communities from voluntary communities, corresponding to the “hacker” image, to more business-oriented communities deviating from the image. It is particularly noteworthy that old and familiar modes of organization based on waged labor are increasingly a part of developer communities. This may create new dynamics and tensions both inside communities and between the various partners taking part in Free/Open Source software development projects.

A putative East Asian business model

PurposeThis paper aims to distill from both the Asian “miracle” and the “meltdown” since the Asian crisis, a generic East Asian business model which is changing in the context of globalisation, information communication technology, knowledge‐based economy, deregulation and emerging new competition.Design/methodology/approachThe generic business model considers the creative and innovative nature of intellectual capital in a qualitative macroeconomic development model rather than a quantitative or econometric micro‐level business modeling for the firm or industry. Diverse and heterogeneous both within the whole of East Asia and distinguished as Northeast and Southeast Asia, the putative generic business model is further differentiated in terms of customised idiosyncratic models in more mature Northeast developmental states in Japan, Korea and Taiwan contrasted with Southeast “captured” developmental states as in Indonesia and Malaysia entrapped by ethnic politics.FindingsCity‐states Hong Kong and Singapore are exceptional because of their size and resultant globalised states. To each its own may be the conclusion in terms of customised national systems and models, but East Asian ethical and moral dimensions of integrity may generally offer a version moral capitalism of which is suited to global capitalism not of the brute Darwinist kind. In the final analysis, East Asia is increasingly exposed to the global marketplace, competition and globalisation backlash, such that some common denominator comes from DFI and MNCs from multicultural political economy dimensions.Originality/valueThe paper presents a putative East Asian business models.

The Ethics of Capitalism

Other| August 01 2006 The Ethics of Capitalism George Vradenburg George Vradenburg Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Tikkun (2006) 21 (3): 14–15. https://doi.org/10.1215/08879982-2006-3005 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation George Vradenburg; The Ethics of Capitalism. Tikkun 1 August 2006; 21 (3): 14–15. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/08879982-2006-3005 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsTikkun Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © Tikkun magazine2006 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Departments You do not currently have access to this content.

Race, Nation, and Market: Economic Culture in Porfirian Mexico (review)

Reviewed by: Race, Nation, and Market: Economic Culture in Porfirian Mexico Danny J. Anderson Weiner, Richard . Race, Nation, and Market: Economic Culture in Porfirian Mexico. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 2004. 167 pages. In Race, Nation, and Market: Economic Culture in Porfirian Mexico, Richard Weiner provides an innovative exploration of turn-of-the century Mexican economic history. Focusing on the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth, Weiner analyzes the way that the market functioned as contested signifier. Rather the empirical approaches to Mexican economic history that characterize the scholarship of John Coatsworth or Stephen Haber, Weiner examines the discursive construction of various meanings associated with the concept of the market and emphasizes the relationship among these constructions and political positions in the larger social field. In the first chapter, Weiner describes his methodology, explaining that he "analyzes discourse," or more specifically "public discourse" (7), in order to examine the competing notions of market that circulated in the Porfirian period and the rhetorical defects achieved by these notions in the struggle for power. Inspired by the scholarship of Albert Hirschman and of Ricardo Salvatore (the latter also examines economic discourse in Latin America), Weiner notes that "the market is not a physical place where goods are exchanged but a symbolic site where the identities and programs of social movements are constructed" (5). Following from this insight, he identifies a series of different markets that are discursively contested during these decades: "land, labor, capital, commodity, and international markets" (8). According to Weiner, at this particular historical moment, the market and economic discourse became central for a variety of reasons. Unprecedented political stability had finally allowed for attention to economic matters. International economic changes underscored the importance and impact of modernization processes. State emphasis on material progress directly linked the nation to notions of market success and competition. And discourses critical of the state also used the market rhetorically to formulate justifications for dissent and opposition. In order to follow through on this analytical model in the ensuing chapters, Weiner identifies principal symbolic uses of the market formulated from three particular social positions: developmentalist liberalism, social Catholicism, and radical liberalism/anarchism. Throughout, Weiner emphasizes the ways that the symbolic conceptualizations of market participate in the notions of identity, serve to construct racialized identities (especially of Mexico's indigenous population), and supposedly affect behavior depending on the social power attributed to the market. In chapters two and three, Weiner examines the establishment discourse of the group known as los científicos, the members of the ruling elite who were "scientific" because of their positivist legacy. Weiner takes a term from Alan Knight and characterizes this group as "developmentalist liberals" (21–22): they were interested in [End Page 107] the creation, not distribution, of wealth as the key to Mexico's progress. In chapter two Weiner attends particularly to the domestic policy implications of developmentalist liberalism: market rhetoric emphasizes discipline and control with the goal of creating a manageable, educated labor force able to increase national productivity. Weiner concludes that although nineteenth-century market theories such as those of Adam Smith and David Ricardo attributed power to the market and the inevitable emergence of homo economicus, the Mexican versions of this liberal discourse attenuated the power attributed to the market and noted the failure of the market to conjure individuals economically driven to maximize profit. Indians in particular, with communal lands and misunderstood behavior, were outside the market system and thus developmentalist liberals supported state intervention through practices such as forced labor, vagrancy laws, mandatory consumption, labor contractors, and education. The hacendado class and the hacienda system were diagnosed as needing more forceful state intervention to inculcate a capitalist ethic of productivity. In chapter three, Weiner keeps his focus on the científicos, but turns toward international markets. With the dramatic changes in global flows of capital, labor, and goods in the late nineteenth century, the international markets had an immense impact on Mexico. Whereas nineteenth-century liberalism ascribed to the concept of competition in a free market, Weiner notes that developmentalist liberalism, influenced by social Darwinism and the desire to consolidate national sovereignty, called for strong state intervention...

The neglected moral benefits of the market

Jerry Z. Muller I~ our society, defenses of the market come primarily rom those concerned with economic and material well-being. Those who see themselves as the protectors of morality are more likely to be antipathetic to the market. But what about the positive moral effects of the market that tend to get o v e r l o o k e d in na r rowly economistic discussions about production and distribution? To be sure, many of these benefits also have potential costs. But since these costs tend to receive the most attention from moralists, I will note them here without dilating upon them, not because they are less significant but because they are likely to be more familiar. One perennial pitfall in thinking about the moral effects of capitalism is the issue of comparison. When philosophers ask about the morality of capitalism, they too rarely ask "compared to what"? Of course, capitalism is morally inferior to many a philosophical utopia. And our comparative evaluation of capitalism is further skewed by the fact that when we compare capitalism to past regimes, it is often implicitly from the perspectives of those who profited most and suffered least in past systems--from the perspectives of lords rather than serfs, of masters rather than slaves, aristocrats rather than commoners. With that caveat in mind, let me turn to the first argument about the positive moral effects of the market, namely the link between individual autonomy and selfsupport through legally free labor. Adam Smith famously wrote: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens." This passage is most famous as a statement of the potential utility of self-interest. But notice its assertion that dependence upon the benevolence of others is morally degrading and hence something we should try to avoid if possible. Thomas Carlyle--and later Marx and Engels--would decry this system of mutual appeals to self-interest as "the cash nexus." But the flip side of the cash nexus is first of all the freedom and self-determination that comes from having cash; and second, the fact that relations based on cash do not involve the total subordination of one individual to the will of another-the characteristic forms of human relations under slavery or serfdom. Nor does it involve the subordination of the individual to the will of the state and its officials, characteristic of socialism. That is why Hegel insisted that supporting oneself by earning a living is one of the most important ways in which men get a sense of themselves as autonomous individuals. What he called "the ethic of bourgeois society," includes a commitment to "the activity of supporting oneself through reason and industriousness." All of this has dark sides, potential and real. It may lead us to a mindless commitment to work at the expense of other goods. It may lead to the belief that personal value comes only from paid labor, leading to a fear of dependence on others, or leading us to underinvest our time in vital but unpaid activity. The second argument asserts that the moral quality of self-support derives in good part from the fact that it so often extends beyond the individual, to his or her family and descendants. This argument reminds us not to confuse self-interest with selfishness, for the "interests" we pursue in the marketplace often involve more than just ourselves. As Edmund Burke put it, "The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice."

“The Orthodox Spirit and the Ethic of Capitalism”: A Case Study on Serbia and Montenegro and the Serbian Orthodox Church

“The Orthodox Spirit and the Ethic of Capitalism”: A Case Study on Serbia and Montenegro and the Serbian Orthodox Church

“The Orthodox Spirit and the Ethic of Capitalism”

“The Orthodox Spirit and the Ethic of Capitalism”

Moral capitalism: reconciling private interest with the public good

The value pyramid moral capitalism and brutish capitalism the Caux Roundtable's seven principles for business responsibilities to customers responsibilities to employees responsibilities to owners and investors responsibilities to suppliers responsibilities to competitors responsibilities to communities how moral capitalism creates wealth and ends poverty - principles for responsible government a practical route to leadership for moral capitalism.

Compulsive Gambling, Diagrammatic Reasoning, and Spacing Out

James Rizzo is a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Chicago. He is completing a dissertation on compulsive gambling and the ethics of capitalism.

WEBER IN SOUTHERN AFRICA? Reflections on John and Jean Comaroff's Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume II

standing and the unease with master narratives and the dualisms they The Comaroffs' RRII is a complex work, possibly jarring to historians because of its rhetorical structure, but strongly neomodern. We identify a tension throughout the work between the desire for comprehensive underinevitably set up. This ambivalence, together with their brilliant exposition of the limits of the rationalist/modernist project and of course the very subject matter of the book, remind us of Weber. However, where Weber understood the capitalist ethic as a kind of resolution to contradictions raised by the Protestant 'revolution in revelation,' the Comaroffs attend to the rupture between the intended consequences of Protestantism and the actual consequences of capitalism as they unfolded in southern Africa.

The Continuing Quest for Accountable, Ethical, and Humane Corporate Capitalism

The Continuing Quest for Accountable, Ethical, and Humane Corporate Capitalism

The Dollar Game: Questioning the Ethics of Capitalism and Bargaining

In this half-hour class exercise, students who randomly receive index cards with dollar signs on the back of them negotiate with students who randomly receive blank index cards. The exercise raises issues of distributive justice, negotiating ethics, and unfair competitive advantages. The exercise addresses three key issues: (a) the ethics of people who control a scarce resource, (b) the ethics of people who do not control a scarce resource, and (c) the ethics of distributing less income than budgeted.

Social responsibility is free?

Features responses to a piece by the Editor on the “Ethics of capitalism”. Views include the point that irresponsibility is not a characteristic of capitalism although it is a characteristic of some people. Also notes some of the moves being made to promote more responsible behaviour from companies, suggesting that TQM principles apply strongly to this debate.

A Critique of Daytime Television Gameshows and the Celebration of Merchandise: The Price Is Right

Scholars interested in popular culture in general, and the culture of consumption in particular, should find Morris Holbrook's Daytime Television Shows and the Celebration of Merchandise: The Price Is Right of interest for several reasons.' For example, Holbrook rightly points to the paucity of research that exists with respect to this genre; argues convincingly that as artifacts of low game shows offer a potentially advantageous vantage point commanding a view on the vistas of meaning available to the modem mind (10); and provides a lucid discussion of the difference between (Marxist) interpretation and the interpretive framework known as theory. Finally, he reminds us of the variety of game shows that exist in American culture, thus aiding those who may wish to study issues within and across these programs. Yet while Holbrook's book may help game shows earn the attention they richly deserve, his basic assumptions nevertheless impose unnecessary restrictions upon those interested in pursuing work in this area. To illustrate this point, I examine each of Holbrook's major assumptions, and in the process provide an overview of the book. I then suggest ways to build upon Holbrook's work, thus allowing for a broader research agenda than the one he proposes. Assumption #1. Game Shows Demand To Be Interpreted Within the Critical Paradigm In Chapter Holbrook offers an excellent discussion of the difference between the tenets of critical/Marxist interpretation, and those of readerresponse theory. Holbrook explains that critical scholars seek out existing meaning in text, and that such meaning always reaffirms that those controlling the mass media use these media to further their own goals. However, scholars who employ a readerresponse interpretation do not seek out existing meaning, but rather explore the active, negotiated reading (21) of mass-mediated messages the point of view of the audience. Holbrook argues that the Marxist/critical perspective is the only logical framework which to approach the meaning of the game show. He writes: Sometimes a program or type of program appears that is so single-minded in its obeisance to the dominant ideology that its hegemonic support of the capitalist ethic and the ethos of consumption cannot reasonably be avoided by any plethora of potentially viable resistant readings (25). Or expressed in terminology relevant to the subject of game shows, Holbrook insists that researchers always choose the critical/Marxist perspective behind Door Number 1, rather than other, and potentially equally fruitful, interpretive paradigms that lie behind Door Number 2, Door Number 3, and so on. Holbrook's assumption that prize-oriented game shows could only achieve large-scale success in a capitalist, materialistic is no doubt correct. However, it is premature to dismiss reader-response theory-or for that matter, any other potentially viable interpretive framework-as inapplicable to the study of game shows. It simply appears shortsighted to ignore the meanings that viewers may generate and negotiate while watching these programs. Thus, before interpretive frameworks besides critical theory are dismissed, studies that apply these frameworks while examining the meaning of game shows are surely warranted. Assumption #2: Game Shows Are the Vilest Types of Television Programs in Existence Throughout his book, Holbrook makes no attempt to hide his disdain of game shows. He describes such programs as insidious greed-dominated threat[s] to that is potentially beautiful...in Western civilization (28), as the embodiment of all that is worst, lowest and most despicable in America's version of the Consumer Culture (32), and as a televised stream of vacuity (37). Furthermore, he describes game show viewers as relatively uneducated, and from the lower socioeconomic echelons of society (85). …

Essay reviews: Eugenics revisited

Sir Francis Galton, F.R.S. — The Legacy of his Ideas . Proceedings of the twenty-eighth annual symposium of the Galton Institute, 1991. Edited by Milo Keynes. London: Macmillan, 1993. Pp x + 237, £40. ISBN 0-333-54695-4. Victorian Britain will remain for many decades a source of fascination and wonderment for the historically inclined. The world’s richest and most politically stable democracy, Imperial Britain, ruled its huge overseas Empire with relative enlightenment, and very considerable profit, while laissez-faire capitalism surged triumphantly forward at home, bringing in its wake a marvellous infrastructure of railways, roads, urban housing, hospitals, sewerage systems, schools and universities to cater for the expectations of the ever-expanding bourgeoisie. ‘Dark Satanic mills’ transformed the countryside and sustained a huge shift of population from country to town, generating wealth for a society which tolerated child labour, exploitation of women, and appalling poverty and deprivation. It was the era of Victorian morality: hierarchical, retributional and stultifyingly formal, both within and outside the Victorian family. Indeed, many features of twentieth-century life in Britain have, for better or worse, stemmed from a rejection of the moral austerity and oppressive capitalism of that era. Yet the Victorian era manifested much that was wholly admirable. It saw the beginnings of that sense of social duty and egalitarianism which continued to spread widely in Britain right up to the 1960s; it was also an era of intellectual innovation and turmoil, especially in political theory, philosophy and the natural sciences.

On the morality of capitalism: In light of the market socialist alternative

The highly unequal distribution of property return under contemporary capitalism is morally legitimate if property incomes are earned in some meaningful economic sense. But no such sense would exist if some appropriate plan of market socialism could achieve at least as high a level of economic efficiency as contemporary capitalism, while significantly equalizing the distribution of property return. This article discusses various plans of market socialism and various institutional characteristics of capitalism which bear importantly on this matter.

Some Ethical Implications for Capitalism of the Socialist Calculation Debate

The debate that raged in the interwar period between the Austrian economists (who argued the thesis that under socialism it would not be possible to engage in rational economic calculation) and socialist economists (who rejected that thesis) was, narrowly conceived, a debate in positive economics. What was being discussed was certainly not the morality of capitalism or of socialism. Nor, strictly speaking, was the debate even about society's economic well-being under socialism; it concerned the ability of central planners to make decisions that take appropriate account of relevant resource scarcities, in the light of consumer preference rankings. To be sure, the extraordinary interest which surrounded the debate and the passions that lurked barely below its surface testified to the powerful implications of the debate for crucial issues in welfare economics. The Austrians were not merely exploring the economies of socialism; they were in effect demonstrating that, as an economic system attempting to serve the needs of its citizens, socialism must inevitably fail. But, even if the debate is interpreted in its broadest terms, as a debate in welfare economics, it represented a sharp break widi traditional polemics relating to the socialism-capitalism issue. Traditionally the arguments for or against capitalism had, until 1920, been deeply involved in ediical questions. Mises's 1920 challenge to socialism, in contrast, was explicit in making no attempt to address any claims concerning the alleged moral superiority of socialism. He simply argued that, as an economic system, socialism was inherendy incapable of fulfilling the objectives of its proponents; central planners are unable to plan centrally.

“Making it” in America

This article takes the concept of “making it” in America as the central thrust behind immigrant entrepreneurship. The social values behind “making it” are dissected, and closely linked to the capitalist ethic of utilitarianism. Immigrant entrepreneurs are found to play the part of both oppressed and oppressors. They are tools of large corporations, their hard work used by the corporations to make money. On the other hand, the immigrants also oppress others, including workers of their own ethnic group, family members, and the American underclass. The dual oppressed-oppressor role makes the immigrants useful middlemen, as they oppress those beneath them for the benefit of those above. The article ends on a note of hope that seeing these relations clearly will enable people to break out of them.

Entrepreneurs and the social sciences

Abstract The burden of occupying the first established chair of business history at the. London School of Economics (and indeed the first in Britain) is happily lightened by the knowledge that the field is by no means as bereft of research and scholarship as this priority implies. The first two professors of economic history appointed at LSE fifty years ago, Eileen Power and R.H. Tawney, made distinguished contributions, to the study of medieval traders and to the impact of puritanism on the capitalist ethic. Their successors have maintained this interest in business history. T.S. Ashton's study of the business of Peter Stubs of Warrington was one of the building blocks from which his picture of the Industrial Revolution was built. Charlotte Erickson's study of British industrialists remains the classic account of their social and educational origins and career patterns between 1850 and 1950. Donald Coleman and Theo Barker, well before they joined with other scholars to found the Business History Unit, wrote company histories of Courtaulds and Pilkingtons. Nor is this work on the history of business confined to members of the economic history department or to the past: in other departments important work in the history of accounting has been undertaken for example by Professor Yamey and Professor Susan Strange who has developed studies of the history of international business institutions.

Reflections on the ethics of capitalism

(1985). Reflections on the ethics of capitalism. Forum for Social Economics: Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 19-27.