Dr. Wolff’s views and claims about the economic growth in the USSR and China seem to set aside the sense in which both could benefit from developments that took place earlier and elsewhere. It seems to me, and Glenn alluded to this, both countries were so far behind Western Europe and the US in 1917 and 1949 respectively as to make the comparison questionable. They didn’t need to develop key technologies from the ground up. It isn’t clear to me how much of the growth is attributable to their economic systems in contrast to benefiting from the wider global context.
Some of Dr. Wolff’s comments about capitalism and the problems of Youngstown and those places left behind as the result of major shifts in the market reflect the problem of what Schumpeter referred to as the ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism. Dr. Wolff recommended planning as a solution. I appreciate his point that planning need not be too centralized, but I am reminded of the quip from the film the Patriot that there is little difference between one tyrant 3000 miles away and 3000 tyrants one mile way. I find appeals to democracy exasperating in the sense that some basic human rights ought not be put up to a vote. Those kinds of rights were ignored in the creative destruction of communism.
I have recently finished reading the Bourgeois Trilogy by Dr. Deirdre McCloskey. A short version, coauthored with Art Carden, ‘Leave Me Alone, and I Will Make You Rich,’ gives a sense of her case. She makes the case that there is a good deal of confusion about forces of the ‘great enrichment’ or the enormous numbers of people who have moved out of poverty since about 1800. Her argument is that this change was largely the result, not of capitalism when thought of primarily in terms of accumulation, but the element of market tested improvement within capitalism. She prefers the term ‘innovism’ to capitalism. Innovism developed, in part, as some of the cultural obstacles that prevented individuals, especially the bourgeois, from innovating weakened. Both authoritarian governments and the masses tend to throw up obstacles to innovation. In other words, it was the expansion of individual liberties that made for growth not, as she sometimes puts it, ‘piling brick upon brick.’
A key element of McCloskey’s case is that a change in rhetoric encouraged a cultural shift that allowed individuals to ‘have a go’ in the market. There are some elements of her writings that remind me of Glenn’s work on social capital, to the small extent that I understand it.
Dr. Wolff’s views and claims about the economic growth in the USSR and China seem to set aside the sense in which both could benefit from developments that took place earlier and elsewhere. It seems to me, and Glenn alluded to this, both countries were so far behind Western Europe and the US in 1917 and 1949 respectively as to make the comparison questionable. They didn’t need to develop key technologies from the ground up. It isn’t clear to me how much of the growth is attributable to their economic systems in contrast to benefiting from the wider global context.
Some of Dr. Wolff’s comments about capitalism and the problems of Youngstown and those places left behind as the result of major shifts in the market reflect the problem of what Schumpeter referred to as the ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism. Dr. Wolff recommended planning as a solution. I appreciate his point that planning need not be too centralized, but I am reminded of the quip from the film the Patriot that there is little difference between one tyrant 3000 miles away and 3000 tyrants one mile way. I find appeals to democracy exasperating in the sense that some basic human rights ought not be put up to a vote. Those kinds of rights were ignored in the creative destruction of communism.
I have recently finished reading the Bourgeois Trilogy by Dr. Deirdre McCloskey. A short version, coauthored with Art Carden, ‘Leave Me Alone, and I Will Make You Rich,’ gives a sense of her case. She makes the case that there is a good deal of confusion about forces of the ‘great enrichment’ or the enormous numbers of people who have moved out of poverty since about 1800. Her argument is that this change was largely the result, not of capitalism when thought of primarily in terms of accumulation, but the element of market tested improvement within capitalism. She prefers the term ‘innovism’ to capitalism. Innovism developed, in part, as some of the cultural obstacles that prevented individuals, especially the bourgeois, from innovating weakened. Both authoritarian governments and the masses tend to throw up obstacles to innovation. In other words, it was the expansion of individual liberties that made for growth not, as she sometimes puts it, ‘piling brick upon brick.’
A key element of McCloskey’s case is that a change in rhetoric encouraged a cultural shift that allowed individuals to ‘have a go’ in the market. There are some elements of her writings that remind me of Glenn’s work on social capital, to the small extent that I understand it.