Abstract
Accounts showing that it is not only political rule that is subject to a process of historical transformation, but that economic forms also change, can be found as far back as Greek in mythology. There are allusions made in Greek philosophy — in Dicaearchus2 and Aristotle3, for instance — to a doctrine according to which the economy develops in stages. Ever since the Renaissance, if not earlier, the Western world has also been aware that cultural epochs change. The 19th century, in par- ticular, was convinced that economic and cultural evolution were the manifestation of a general upward trend which also embraced mores. Those who had this awareness of progress sensed that it was new and capable of altering the “character of cultural movement”: “We will go from acting withoutawareness, 10 being aware of our actions”4.
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References
This essay was also presented at a conference of economists of the Universities Lumière Lyon 2 and Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University Frankfurt a. M. on „Symposium on Economic Systems“. It will be published in German in the proceedings of the conference.
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As a matter of fact, I first turned to the concept of economic style with the intention of using it for the comparison of alternative scenarios of future economic and societal developments (cf. K. M. MEYER-ABICH, B. SCHEFOLD: Wie möchten wir in Zukunft leben, MÜnchen (Beck) 1981, and K. M. MEYER-ABICH, B. SCHEFOLD: Die Grenzen der Atomwirtschaft, MÜnchen (Beck) 1.-4. ed. 1986.
As a matter of fact, he distinguished several other modes of production which were all related to some extent with specific cultural and political manifestations, such as the primitive mode of production, that of the Germanic tribes, the Asiatic mode of production, and perhaps others (see K. MARX: „Formen, die der kapitalistischen Produktion vorhergehn“, in: K. MARX: Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Berlin (Dietz) 1953, pp. 375-413; and H.-P. HARSTICK: Karl Marx iber Formen vorkapitalistischer Produktion. Vergleichende Studien zur Geschichte des Grundeigentums. Aus dem handschriftlichen Nachlaβ, Frankfurt (Campus) 1977.
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This heterogeneity was emphasised by A. MÜLLER-ARMACK: Genealogie der sozialen Marktwirtschaft, Bern (Haupt) 1974. Conceming the difference between the concepts of Social Market Economy and of Neoliberalism, see pp. 148-155. For the tradition of the Soziale Marktwirtschaft, cf. also: L. ERHARD: Gedanken aus finf Jahrzehnten. Reden und Schriften, ed. by Karl Hohmann, Düsseldorf (Econ) 1988, and E. V. BECKERATH, F. W. MEYER, A. MOLLER-ARMACK (Eds.): Wirtschaftsfragen der freien Welt, Frankfurt (Kneip) 1992 [repr. of 1957]. (Part Two contains a discussion of the social market economy).
Economic systems and economic styles are not the only concepts used to describe different economic forms. Apart from stages and modes of production, we should also mention modes of regulation which refer to the correspondence between patterns of technological evolution (such as mass production) and the socio-economic attitudes and arrangements supporting them (such as Taylorism and the aspirations to a rising standard of living on the part of wage earners.) Modes of regulation are plausibly related to long waves of capitalist development It is not clear to me to what extent the concept would also be suitable for the description of earlier economic forms which are our main concern here.
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Schefold, B. (1995). Theoretical Approaches to a Comparison of Economic Systems from a Historical Perspective. In: Koslowski, P. (eds) The Theory of Ethical Economy in the Historical School. Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-57801-4_11
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