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The Dialectics of Abundance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Walter A. Weisskopf
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It is customary to view the development of the Western economies as a straight line, leading from scarcity in the 19th century to affluence and abundance in the 20th. This interpretation neglects the dialectical reversal that took place and is taking place within a continuous development. The relative affluence and abundance of the Western economies is indeed the result of the economic system with all its institutions and its value-attitudes which emerged during and after the Industrial Revolution in the West. At the same time, this affluence was accompanied by a change in the character of its institutions, and especially also by a change in the underlying value-attitudes and in the style of life which it prescribes. The development was and is a truly dialectical one: the economics and psychology of scarcity and its institutions brought about an economics and psychology of affluence which is, in some respects, the antithesis of the economics and psychology of scarcity. This antithesis begins to undermine the institutional, psychological, and moral bases of the original system. A dialectical reversal is under way which shakes the foundations of our economic and moral order.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 15 , Issue 57 , March 1967 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © 1967 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 Walter A. Weisskopf, The Psychology of Economics, 1955, London: Rout ledge & Kegan Paul; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, ch. 2.

2 Edward Mason, "The Apologetics of Managerialism," in The Journal of Business, The University of Chicago, Vol. XXXI, No. I, January, 1955, 1.

3 Walter A. Weisskopf, "The Changing Moral Temper of Economic Thought," in Zeitschrift für Nationaloekonomie, Vol. XXI, No. I, 1961, 1-20.

4 Walter A. Weisskopf, "The Changing Meaning of Economic Action," in Festschrift für Walter Heinrich, Graz, 1963, 263-275.

5 See note 1, ch. 17.

6 J. K. Galbraith, The Affluent Society, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1958.

7 Bertrand de Jouvenel, Free University Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 2, August 1959, 15.

8 Walter A. Weisskopf, "Economic Growth and Human Well-Being," in Quarterly Journal of Economics and Business, published by the School of Busi ness of the University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois, Vol. 4, No. 2, Summer 1964, 17-29.

9 David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1950, esp. chapter VII.

10 Karl Marx, Die Frühschriften, Stuttgart, Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1953.

11 Karl Marx, Die deutsche Ideologie, in Marx-Engels, Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), Berlin-Moskau, Erste Abteilung, Bd. 5, 22, translation mine.

12 Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, Boston, The Beacon Press, 1955.

13 See also I. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, Boston, The Beacon Press, 1950.

14 Kenneth Kenniston, The Uncommitted, New York, Harcourt, Brace and World, 1960, esp. pp. 253 ff., 354 ff., 368 ff., 439.