Unproductive Labour in Political Economy
Unproductive Labour in Political Economy

Author: Cosimo Perrotta

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-06-13

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 1317218310

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Contemporary mainstream economists see social wealth as the sum of individual incomes, but for three centuries many economists saw wealth as consisting of the public and private resources of a nation. This led them to explore the idea of unproductive labour, which provides a nation with an individual income, but does not contribute to an increase in social wealth or help to foster development. This book analyses the evolution of ideas surrounding unproductive labour, offering an unprecedented history that guides readers from the work of Petty through to the present economic crisis. This volume explores the work of several key scholars, including Smith, Petty, Marx, Ricardo, Mill, Say and Schumpeter. This book is suitable for scholars and researchers with an interest in the history of economic thought, labour economics and economic philosophy. Winner of the 2019 Ernest Lluch Prize from the Spanish Association of Economic History

Owning Ideas
Owning Ideas

Author: Oren Bracha

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-12-01

Total Pages: 537

ISBN-13: 131687589X

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Owning Ideas is a comprehensive account of the emergence of the concept of intellectual property in the United States during the long nineteenth century. In the modern information era, intellectual property has become a central economic and cultural phenomenon, and an important lever for allocating wealth and power. This book uncovers the intellectual origins of this modern concept of private property in ideas through a close study of its emergence within the two most important areas of this field: patent and copyright. By placing the development of legal concepts within their social context, this study reconstructs the radical transformation of the idea. Our modern notion of owning ideas, it argues, came into being when the ideals of eighteenth-century possessive individualism at the heart of early patent and copyright were subjected to the forces and ideology of late-nineteenth-century corporate liberalism.

The Conundrum of Class
The Conundrum of Class

Author: Martin J. Burke

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1995-09

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 9780226080819

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Martin Burke traces the surprisingly complicated history of the idea of class in America from the forming of a new nation to the heart of the Gilded Age. Surveying American political, social, and intellectual life from the late 17th to the end of the 19th century, Burke examines in detail the contested discourse about equality—the way Americans thought and wrote about class, class relations, and their meaning in society. Burke explores a remarkable range of thought to establish the boundaries of class and the language used to describe it in the works of leading political figures, social reformers, and moral philosophers. He traces a shift from class as a legal category of ranks and orders to socio-economic divisions based on occupations and income. Throughout the century, he finds no permanent consensus about the meaning of class in America and instead describes a culture of conflicting ideas and opinions.

Nation, State and the Industrial Revolution
Nation, State and the Industrial Revolution

Author: Lars Magnusson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-09-10

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1135256632

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The industrial revolution and the creation of the modern (national) state are two of the most important historical processes to have occurred in Europe during the 19th century. The state and other bodies of governance play an important role in the development of capitalist market societies since the 18th century. But modern market economies are to a large degree a product of the interplay between market and governance. Yet we are often told a strikingly different tale about the modern economy, at least how it ought to work and operate - as far as possible without public interference. Even more frequently we have been taught that the modern capitalist market economy is a product of an industrial revolution, originating with the UK in the middle of the 18th century propelled by laissez faire and the triumph of free markets which gradually liberated themselves from the grip of an old dirigiste state. This book argues that in order to get a better understanding of this period and the rise of modern industrial capitalism it is necessary to link the industrial revolution in its various forms to a political and institutional context of state-making and the creation of modern national states. Professor Magnusson demonstrates that a historical narrative which does not acknowledge the role of the state and public governance for the establishment of the modern capitalist market economy is fundamentally flawed.

A Selected Bibliography of Significant Works About Adam Smith
A Selected Bibliography of Significant Works About Adam Smith

Author: Martha Bolar Lightwood

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2016-11-11

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 1512803790

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The two-hundredth anniversary in 1976 of the publication of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations emphasized the already evident new interest in the relationship between Smith's social and political thought and his economic theory. Only recently have economists turned their attention to Smith's other works, long overshadowed by the more renowned The Wealth of Nations. Martha Lightwood here argues that A Theory of Moral Sentiments actually laid the philosophic groundwork for The Wealth of Nations and emphasizes that Smith's writings, considered in their totality, represent a compelling interest not solely in economics but in philosophy and the study of society. Selected for this bibliography are major contributions and representative studies on three aspects of Smith's work: moral philosophy, the history of the development of scientific methodology, and political economy.