Ian Morris has written a pair of books that are intended to contribute to a particularly important set of disagreements in comparative economic history: what accounts for the advantage in economic development that seems to be enjoyed by Western Europe at various points in history? The key arguments are presented in Why the West Rules--for …
Large predictions in history
To what extent is it possible to predict the course of large-scale history -- the rise and fall of empires, the occurrence of revolution, the crises of capitalism, or the ultimate failure of twentieth-century Communism? One possible basis for predictions is the availability of theories of underlying processes. To arrive at a supportable prediction about …
Merchant capital
Karl Marx was very interested in capital -- an abstract concept referring to society's wealth. And he was interested in the persons who owned and controlled capital -- the capitalists. But the primary focus of his lifelong analysis was upon one particular species of capital, what he referred to as "industrial capital." This is the form …
A new history of China
James Lee and Byong-Ho Lee have created a remarkable new course on Coursera titled "A New History for a New China, 1700-2000: New Data and New Methods, Part 1". This production is a genuinely important contribution to Chinese history. The course is not designed as an up-to-date summary of the history of early modern China, …
Marx and the physiocrats
An earlier post highlighted an interesting piece of Marx scholarship by Regina Roth, included in a Routledge collection of important articles on the history of political economy (link). Another article that is of special interest in the Routledge collection is "Karl Marx on physiocracy" by Christian Gehrke and Heinz Kurz (link). The illustrations reproduced above …
Adelman on Albert Hirschman
Jeremy Adelman's detailed and illuminating biography of Albert Hirschman in Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman is an excellent example of intellectual biography. Even more, it is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the development of social science theories and frameworks. Born to a professional Jewish family in Berlin in 1915, Hirschman's …
Marx’s thinking about technology
It sometimes seems as though there isn't much new to say about Marx and his theories. But, like any rich and prolific thinker, that's not actually true. Two articles featured in the Routledge Great Economists series (link) are genuinely interesting. Both are deeply scholarly treatment of interesting aspects of the development of Marx's thinking, and …
What about Marx?
At various points since the death of Karl Marx in 1883 his work has been regarded as a dead issue -- no longer relevant, too ideological, methodologically flawed, too rooted in the nineteenth century. And yet each of these periods of extinction has been followed by a resurgence of interest in Marx's ideas, as new …
Hirschman on the passions
Numerous previous posts have emphasized the importance of having a theory of the actor when we do social science or history. Are people impulsive, emotional, envious, prudent, or moral -- or a mix of all of these things in different settings? We need to have some explicit and fact-based ideas about how and why people …
Elster on Tocqueville
Jon Elster is one of the people whose thinking about society and the social sciences has made a consistently important contribution to the philosophy of social science. So Elster's treatment of Tocqueville as a social scientist in Alexis de Tocqueville, the First Social Scientist will be of interest to anyone who wants to know how …
Understanding Society 