Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T03:42:20.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Where Art Thou, Adam Smith?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2013

Tom Hoffman
Tom Hoffman*
Affiliation:
Spring Hill College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The early years of the twenty-first century have not been good for global capitalism. An international credit crisis and a widespread recession, with all of their attendant anxieties and miseries, have unsurprisingly shaken public support for free-market processes—especially within many of capitalism's traditional strongholds. As a colorful token of this lost faith, The Socialist Economic Bulletin, published by London's leftist former mayor Ken Livingstone, reported in 2010 a “tenfold increase” in sales of Karl Marx's Das Kapital in Germany from the year prior. Meanwhile, from the other end of the ideological spectrum, in 2011 The Economist reported that public support for free-market economics actually fared relatively well in Marx's native Germany, where it drew the highest level of support among the 25 national populations surveyed (just edging out nominally communist China). Indeed, support in both Germany and China was strong compared to capitalism's depressed standing in the United States. The percentage of American respondents willing to give at least qualified assent (i.e., to choose “somewhat agree” or better) to the claim that it is the “best” economic system fell from a leading 80% early in the millennium to just 59% by 2010.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 193 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

“Capitalism's Waning Popularity.” 2011. The Economist, April 9, 398 (8728): 70.Google Scholar
Cassidy, John. 2010. “Interview with Richard Posner.” The New Yorker Online. January 13. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2010/01/interview-with-richard-posner.html (accessed June 20, 2011).Google Scholar
Cowen, Tyler. 2007. Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting and Motivate Your Dentist. New York: Dutton.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” In The Interpretation of Culture: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, 3–30.Google Scholar
Hume, David. 1987. Essays: Moral, Political and Literary. Ed. Eugene F. Miller. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc.Google Scholar
Krugman, Paul. 2009. “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?” New York Times Magazine, September 6, 36.Google Scholar
Macpherson, C.B. 1962. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C. 1997. Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posner, Richard A. 2009. A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Posner, Richard A. 2010. The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert D. 2003. “APSA Presidential Address: The Public Role of Political Science.” Perspectives on Politics 1(2): 249–55.Google Scholar
Snow, C.P. 1959. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Winch, Donald. 1978. Adam Smith's Politics: An Essay in Historiographic Revision. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winch, Donald. 1996. Riches and Poverty: An Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain, 1750–1834. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Winch, Donald. 1997. “Adam Smith's Problems and Ours.” Scottish Journal of Political Economy 44(4): 384–402.Google Scholar
“Sales of Marx's Capital Increase by 1000% in Germany.” 2010. Socialist Economic Bulletin. August 20. http://socialisteconomicbulletin.blogspot.com/2010/08/sales-of-marxs-capital-increase-by-1000.html (accessed May 31, 2011).Google Scholar