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Tutkular ve Çıkarlar: Kapitalizm Zaferini İlan Etmeden Önce Nasıl Savunuluyordu?
Siyasal iktisadın tanınmış isimlerinden Albert O. Hirschman kapitalizmin şekillenmekte olduğu on yedinci ve on sekizinci yüzyıllardaki düşünsel havayı inceleyerek, çok uzun süre günah sayılan maddi çıkar peşinde koşmanın nasıl olup da hayatın merkezine oturduğu sorusuna cevap arıyor. Kapitalizmin yükselişine farklı bir yorum getiren yazar, Marksist ve Weberci düşüncenin ortak paydası olan kopuş fikrine değil, eski ile yeni arasındaki sürekliliğe vurgu yapıyor. Montesquieu, James Steuart, John Millar, Adam Smith gibi düşünürlerin görüşlerini inceleyen Hirschman, yaşanan uzun süreli ideolojik değişimi içsel bir süreç olarak tanımlıyor ve uzun bir tarihsel dönem boyunca birbirine karşıt tanımlanmış tutku ve çıkarların, Adam Smith tarafından bir tutulmasıyla birlikte koskoca bir düşünce zincirinin hafızalardan silindiğine işaret ediyor. Bir yandan, kapitalizmin "eksiksiz insan kişiliğinin" gelişmesine engel olduğu yolundaki eleştirileri ele alırken, on dokuzuncu yüzyıl öncesinde kapitalizmin zaten hükümdarların ve diğer soyluların tutkularını bastırma ve "daha az yönlü, öngörülemezliği azalmış, tek boyutlu bir insan kişiliği" yaratma amacıyla savunulduğuna dikkat çekiyor. Öte yandan, Keynes gibi "bırakınız yapsınlar" ideolojisi savunucularının savlarının da kapitalizmin gerici yüzünü göstermesinden önce hakim olan "herkesin kendi çıkarının peşinden koşması iyi bir düzen sağlayacaktır" fikrinin bir tekrarından ibaret olduğunun altını çiziyor. Düşünce tarihinin bu kitapta ele alınan bölümü hakkında bilgi edinmek, kapitalizm üzerine yapılacak çalışmalara ciddi ölçüde katkı sağlayacaktır.
152 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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2697 people want to read
About the author
Albert O. Hirschman
70 books141 followersAlbert Otto Hirschman was an economist and the author of several books on political economy and political ideology. His first major contribution was in the area of development economics. Here he emphasized the need for unbalanced growth. He argued that disequilibria should be encouraged to stimulate growth and help mobilize resources, because developing countries are short of decision making skills. Key to this was encouraging industries with many linkages to other firms.
His later work was in political economy and there he advanced two schemata. The first describes the three basic possible responses to decline in firms or polities (quitting, speaking up, staying quiet) in Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970). The second describes the basic arguments made by conservatives (perversity, futility and jeopardy) in The Rhetoric of Reaction (1991).
His later work was in political economy and there he advanced two schemata. The first describes the three basic possible responses to decline in firms or polities (quitting, speaking up, staying quiet) in Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970). The second describes the basic arguments made by conservatives (perversity, futility and jeopardy) in The Rhetoric of Reaction (1991).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 82 reviews
December 7, 2021
[Edit: The long-ago promised, much-procrastinated-upon "digested read" is finally done, and can be read on my site! ]
A bracing dayhike over the peaks (from Italian Alps to Scottish Munros...) of early modern intellectual history, where the views are Olympian and sublime (in the sense of vast and paradoxical), one which answers (and quite admirably) the question: how, in the discourse of the 17th and 18th Centuries, did the passion/vice of avarice journey from damnèd to lauded (via the waystation of reluctantly tolerated)?
We take in Mts. Machiavelli, Mandeville, Vico, Montesquieu, Steuert, and Smith along our trek towards an answer, of sorts, to our question—which is to go into our studies like Machiavelli did in the evening (dressed in whatever finery we have on hand, to better forget our daytime travails back down in our—as Nietzsche saw them—ovine Valleys), and converse with these ancient giants at greater length....
I'm putting together what I call a "Digested Read" for this one, and will post a link to that shortly.
June 14, 2024
"Szerencséjük az embereknek, ha életviszonyaik olyanok, hogy ha természetes hajlamuk gonoszságra indítaná is őket, mégis érdekük, hogy ne legyenek gonoszak."
(Montesquieu)
Érdekes eszmetörténeti nyomozás arról, hogyan lett az anyagi haszonszerzés vágya ördögi érzületből a civilizáció motorja, avagy: hogyan emelkedett fel a habokból a kapitalizmus. Hirschman esszéje tudatosan elkerüli, hogy a protestantizmusról szót ejtsen, úgy van vele, Max Weber már eleget tépte a száját erről, ő nem kíván a teológia viharos vizeire evezni. Megmarad a filozófia és a gazdaságtörténet partmenti sekélyesében, és onnan rittyent egy szemet gyönyörködtető fejtegetést, aminek íve Machiavellitől Montesquieu-n át egészen Adam Smithig terjed.
Kezdjük a középkorban. No most a középkor bizonyos tekintetben elég szigorú és pesszimista kor volt, ami a földi létet egyfajta siralomvölgynek tekintette, a pénzt pedig olyasminek, ami csak megakadályozza, hogy lelkünk a Mennyországba emelkedjék*. A kor tanító irodalma oldalakat írt tele azzal, hogyan kéne elképzelni egy szentséges életet, és milyen is az ún. "jó ember", de valójában nem adott receptet arra, hogy ha az ember véletlenül nem jó, mégis miképp válhatna azzá. Hirschman ebben egyfajta fatalizmust lát: a bölcselők úgy voltak vele, hogy az emberben van szenvedély és van értelem, de utóbbi alapvetően tehetetlen az előbbivel szemben.
Ez - filozófiai értelemben - egy zsákutca, de szerencsére akadtak, akik megtalálták innen a kiutat. Innovatív megoldásuk lényege, hogy a szenvedély és az értelem közé beillesztettek egy harmadik fogalmát: az érdeket. Ezt továbbgondolva pedig eljutottak odáig, hogy egyes szenvedélyek talán felhasználhatóak más szenvedélyekkel szemben, például - dobpergés! - a fejedelem kapzsisága oda vezethet, hogy hagyja gazdagodni a népet, nem öldökli őket halomra, tudva, hogy gazdagságukból ő is részesül. Az uralkodó racionális önérdekének hirdetésétől pedig már csak egy lépés volt a kereskedelem piedesztálra emelése
Fontos hangsúlyozni, ez mennyire forradalmi gondolat volt. Az ígérte, hogy a rablólovagok és felperzselt falvak bizonytalan időszakából kinőhet egy kiszámítható világ, ami pont azért kiszámítható, mert a szubjektív szenvedélyek helyett az objektív érdekek irányítják. Ám közben máris újabb kérdések vetődtek fel. A társadalom ugyanis egyre bonyolultabbá vált, és olybá tűnt, hogy ezt a bonyolultságot nem lehet kezelni pusztán az érdekek meghatározásával. Machiavellinek elég volt a fejedelemhez intézni szavait, úgyis ő volt a góré, ám a XVIII. századra egyre inkább szembesültek a felek azzal, hogy egy államon belül nem egy, de számtalan érdek létezik, ami igencsak bonyolulttá tette az egyenletet. Jellemző, hogy amíg a középkorban az Istent gyakran fazekasként ábrázolták, addig később órásmesterként - nyilván mert a teremtett világ már nem szimpla köcsögre hasonlított leginkább, hanem összetett óraműre. A társadalom tervezhetőségének illúziója szertefoszlani látszott, szóval úgy nézett ki, megint zsákutcába jutottunk. Ám hála a Nagy Órásmesternek, megjelent a színen Adam Smith, aki kirántotta a kátyúból a szekeret a "láthatatlan kéz" ideájával, vagyis a gondolattal, hogy a gazdaságot nem is kell irányítani, mert irányítja az saját magát. És ez már maga a szabadpiaci kapitalizmus.
Annyit még hozzátennék, hogy Hirschmannak eszében sincs dicshimnuszt zengeni a kapitalizmusról. Csak annyi a célja, hogy felvázolja a paradigmaváltást, amely során egy vágy - a meggazdagodás vágya -, amit addig csak elítélni lehetett, egyszeriben dicséretes igyekezetté vált. Mindez pedig talán elősegíti a jobb megértést, ezzel pedig kifinomultabbá teszi a kapitalizmusról folytatott vitákat. Mert a kapitalizmusról igenis vitázni kell, az ilyen írásoknak pedig "nem eldönteni kell a vitát, hanem magasabb szintre emelni."
* Ez persze nem akadályozta meg a pápákat és az uralkodókat abban, hogy egy valag pénzt elverjenek értelmetlen dolgokra. Ugyanakkor valahol számukra sem a pénz volt a lényeg, hanem a reprezentáció - az anyagi javakat nem önmagáért kívánták, hanem olyasvalamiként, amivel napnál világosabban meg tudják mutatni alárendeltjeiknek saját nagyszerűségüket.
(Montesquieu)
Érdekes eszmetörténeti nyomozás arról, hogyan lett az anyagi haszonszerzés vágya ördögi érzületből a civilizáció motorja, avagy: hogyan emelkedett fel a habokból a kapitalizmus. Hirschman esszéje tudatosan elkerüli, hogy a protestantizmusról szót ejtsen, úgy van vele, Max Weber már eleget tépte a száját erről, ő nem kíván a teológia viharos vizeire evezni. Megmarad a filozófia és a gazdaságtörténet partmenti sekélyesében, és onnan rittyent egy szemet gyönyörködtető fejtegetést, aminek íve Machiavellitől Montesquieu-n át egészen Adam Smithig terjed.
Kezdjük a középkorban. No most a középkor bizonyos tekintetben elég szigorú és pesszimista kor volt, ami a földi létet egyfajta siralomvölgynek tekintette, a pénzt pedig olyasminek, ami csak megakadályozza, hogy lelkünk a Mennyországba emelkedjék*. A kor tanító irodalma oldalakat írt tele azzal, hogyan kéne elképzelni egy szentséges életet, és milyen is az ún. "jó ember", de valójában nem adott receptet arra, hogy ha az ember véletlenül nem jó, mégis miképp válhatna azzá. Hirschman ebben egyfajta fatalizmust lát: a bölcselők úgy voltak vele, hogy az emberben van szenvedély és van értelem, de utóbbi alapvetően tehetetlen az előbbivel szemben.
Ez - filozófiai értelemben - egy zsákutca, de szerencsére akadtak, akik megtalálták innen a kiutat. Innovatív megoldásuk lényege, hogy a szenvedély és az értelem közé beillesztettek egy harmadik fogalmát: az érdeket. Ezt továbbgondolva pedig eljutottak odáig, hogy egyes szenvedélyek talán felhasználhatóak más szenvedélyekkel szemben, például - dobpergés! - a fejedelem kapzsisága oda vezethet, hogy hagyja gazdagodni a népet, nem öldökli őket halomra, tudva, hogy gazdagságukból ő is részesül. Az uralkodó racionális önérdekének hirdetésétől pedig már csak egy lépés volt a kereskedelem piedesztálra emelése
Fontos hangsúlyozni, ez mennyire forradalmi gondolat volt. Az ígérte, hogy a rablólovagok és felperzselt falvak bizonytalan időszakából kinőhet egy kiszámítható világ, ami pont azért kiszámítható, mert a szubjektív szenvedélyek helyett az objektív érdekek irányítják. Ám közben máris újabb kérdések vetődtek fel. A társadalom ugyanis egyre bonyolultabbá vált, és olybá tűnt, hogy ezt a bonyolultságot nem lehet kezelni pusztán az érdekek meghatározásával. Machiavellinek elég volt a fejedelemhez intézni szavait, úgyis ő volt a góré, ám a XVIII. századra egyre inkább szembesültek a felek azzal, hogy egy államon belül nem egy, de számtalan érdek létezik, ami igencsak bonyolulttá tette az egyenletet. Jellemző, hogy amíg a középkorban az Istent gyakran fazekasként ábrázolták, addig később órásmesterként - nyilván mert a teremtett világ már nem szimpla köcsögre hasonlított leginkább, hanem összetett óraműre. A társadalom tervezhetőségének illúziója szertefoszlani látszott, szóval úgy nézett ki, megint zsákutcába jutottunk. Ám hála a Nagy Órásmesternek, megjelent a színen Adam Smith, aki kirántotta a kátyúból a szekeret a "láthatatlan kéz" ideájával, vagyis a gondolattal, hogy a gazdaságot nem is kell irányítani, mert irányítja az saját magát. És ez már maga a szabadpiaci kapitalizmus.
Annyit még hozzátennék, hogy Hirschmannak eszében sincs dicshimnuszt zengeni a kapitalizmusról. Csak annyi a célja, hogy felvázolja a paradigmaváltást, amely során egy vágy - a meggazdagodás vágya -, amit addig csak elítélni lehetett, egyszeriben dicséretes igyekezetté vált. Mindez pedig talán elősegíti a jobb megértést, ezzel pedig kifinomultabbá teszi a kapitalizmusról folytatott vitákat. Mert a kapitalizmusról igenis vitázni kell, az ilyen írásoknak pedig "nem eldönteni kell a vitát, hanem magasabb szintre emelni."
* Ez persze nem akadályozta meg a pápákat és az uralkodókat abban, hogy egy valag pénzt elverjenek értelmetlen dolgokra. Ugyanakkor valahol számukra sem a pénz volt a lényeg, hanem a reprezentáció - az anyagi javakat nem önmagáért kívánták, hanem olyasvalamiként, amivel napnál világosabban meg tudják mutatni alárendeltjeiknek saját nagyszerűségüket.
July 12, 2011
Hirschman is a beast. I was hoping to find a few nuggets on the philosophies surrounding capitalism's original sin, but came away with so much more; and in such a short little book at that. No wonder this is a classic in political economy...
May 15, 2021
Explaining phenomena is hard. Physical phenomena have an advantage of periodicity and reproducibility, offering a potential avenue for falsifying hypotheses. And then there are paradigms, ala Kuhn, which may be used to string together regimes of applicability for various theories over both time and space.
For better or worse, phenomena of the social world, especially those in the domain of history, economics, and ideology are not afforded these liberties. History’s causal structure is rarely linear, and our recourse to the past is often only through abstract theories, political treatises, polemical tracts, fictionalized memoirs, and scattered fragments of individual reflections to just name a few variations. While a study of the past is worthy on its own merits, a major draw for 'conversing with the ancients' is an investigation into the genealogy of the institutions and values that shape our lived experience.
Such is the nature of the task that Hirschman undertakes in this exceptional monograph on the ideological foundations of capitalism that traverses the boundary between the contemporary disciplines of economics, sociology, and political science. He carefully reconstructs how the idea that self-interest in the pursuit of money-making and private wealth could act as a countervailing force to the passions of power and authority-seeking behavior gained influence in the intellectual and administrative circles of 17th and 18th century Europe. While this idea's modern interpretation, especially along the economic lines of (neo-) liberalism, is associated with Adam Smith and his successors, Hirschman cites Machiavelli, Vico, Bacon, Spinoza, Cardinal de Retz, Montesquieu, and other figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, to argue that the narrative of money as a civilizing passion was primarily proposed as a political tool in a continent rife with incessant squabbles and wars.
Hirschman's thesis here is that the universal notion of homo economicus repeated ad nauseum today has a very specific history, and is by no means an illustration of man "as he really is." Once we accept that, it becomes clear that not only has this proposition been successfully applied multiple times across the world, but its failures marked by depressions, famines, impoverishment, and income inequalities have been spectacular in their grotesqueness. At the end of the day, when we collectively debate capitalism -- in living rooms, socially distanced cafés, or our preferred internet fora -- Hirschman prods us to be mindful of not just its unintended realizations but also its unrealized intentions, i.e. the illusory promises of how a rational, self-interested people would be the scourge of all our destructive passions.
As a sober and erudite student of social phenomena, Hirschman concludes the book with a surprisingly astute exhortation -- "This is probably all one can ask of history, and of the history of ideas in particular: not to resolve issues, but to raise the level of the debate."
And the level, in my opinion, has been set very high indeed.
For better or worse, phenomena of the social world, especially those in the domain of history, economics, and ideology are not afforded these liberties. History’s causal structure is rarely linear, and our recourse to the past is often only through abstract theories, political treatises, polemical tracts, fictionalized memoirs, and scattered fragments of individual reflections to just name a few variations. While a study of the past is worthy on its own merits, a major draw for 'conversing with the ancients' is an investigation into the genealogy of the institutions and values that shape our lived experience.
Such is the nature of the task that Hirschman undertakes in this exceptional monograph on the ideological foundations of capitalism that traverses the boundary between the contemporary disciplines of economics, sociology, and political science. He carefully reconstructs how the idea that self-interest in the pursuit of money-making and private wealth could act as a countervailing force to the passions of power and authority-seeking behavior gained influence in the intellectual and administrative circles of 17th and 18th century Europe. While this idea's modern interpretation, especially along the economic lines of (neo-) liberalism, is associated with Adam Smith and his successors, Hirschman cites Machiavelli, Vico, Bacon, Spinoza, Cardinal de Retz, Montesquieu, and other figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, to argue that the narrative of money as a civilizing passion was primarily proposed as a political tool in a continent rife with incessant squabbles and wars.
Hirschman's thesis here is that the universal notion of homo economicus repeated ad nauseum today has a very specific history, and is by no means an illustration of man "as he really is." Once we accept that, it becomes clear that not only has this proposition been successfully applied multiple times across the world, but its failures marked by depressions, famines, impoverishment, and income inequalities have been spectacular in their grotesqueness. At the end of the day, when we collectively debate capitalism -- in living rooms, socially distanced cafés, or our preferred internet fora -- Hirschman prods us to be mindful of not just its unintended realizations but also its unrealized intentions, i.e. the illusory promises of how a rational, self-interested people would be the scourge of all our destructive passions.
As a sober and erudite student of social phenomena, Hirschman concludes the book with a surprisingly astute exhortation -- "This is probably all one can ask of history, and of the history of ideas in particular: not to resolve issues, but to raise the level of the debate."
And the level, in my opinion, has been set very high indeed.
September 20, 2012
On this, my second trip through the history of economic thought with Albert Hirschman, I remain no less impressed that the first time around. The Passions and the Interests is Hirschman's examination of 17th and 18th century European thought, particularly as it related to the anticipated political, social, and economic effects of people acting in accordance with their material interests. On balance, and for a variety of reasons, the thinkers Hirschman discusses here--Montesquieu, James Steuart, Adam Smith and others--predicted that the pursuit of self-interest and growth of commerce to be a net positive for societies. These early arguments about the ability of self-interest to restrain violent passions and constrain power hungry political leaders have not held up under the weight of history, but as Hirshman notes, we see more contemporary thinkers fall back on these ideas. For that reason, it is important to revisit them, in order to "raise the level of our debate."
What Hirschman is able to do in this volume is extraordinary. The amount of research he has done for this thin volume is stunning, and he weaves seamlessly and clearly through the work thinkers as varied as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mandeville, Montesquieu, Steuart, Smith, Millar, Marx, Toqueville and many others. One needn't have a thorough background in Western political philosophy to make sense of it, but if your response is anything like mine, you will want to make haste to the nearest library to delve into the theory you don't know. For, as Hirschman shows, we live in a society that is shaped by ideas and expectations. It is worth knowing more than we do about where those ideas originated and why expectations didn't play out as intended.
What Hirschman is able to do in this volume is extraordinary. The amount of research he has done for this thin volume is stunning, and he weaves seamlessly and clearly through the work thinkers as varied as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mandeville, Montesquieu, Steuart, Smith, Millar, Marx, Toqueville and many others. One needn't have a thorough background in Western political philosophy to make sense of it, but if your response is anything like mine, you will want to make haste to the nearest library to delve into the theory you don't know. For, as Hirschman shows, we live in a society that is shaped by ideas and expectations. It is worth knowing more than we do about where those ideas originated and why expectations didn't play out as intended.
April 29, 2020
Tokvil - Narod koji od svoje vlade zahteva samo održavanje reda, već je rob u dubini svoga srca; on je rob svoga blagostanja, i čovek koji će ga okovati može da stupi na scenu.
February 6, 2021
لا يوقف على ما لهذا البحث من خطر وأهمية إلا بأن ينتظم عند قارئه في سلسة من الأفكار أولها ابن خلدون حين وصف انسان البداوة وانسان الحضارة، وذكر في مقدمته كيف يتحول وكيف تدور بتحوله هذا عجلة التاريخ،
وغاية هذا البحث الذي هو معتمد الخائضين في أثر الرأسمالية على الإنسان والتاريخ، انه يوقف على ما خفي في كتب الفلاسفة المؤسسين امثال مونتسيكيو وهوبز، وجون ستيوارت ميل، وآدم سميث من بحوث حول تغيير انسان ابن خلدون وتحويله عن غرائزه وعواطفه، ليصبح انسانا مدفوعا بمنفعته لا أكثر ، فيكسرون بهذا عجلة التاريخ ودورة الحضارة.
وهيرشمان يبحث مسار هذه الأفكار في القرنين السابع عشر والثامن عشر ،
وغاية هذا البحث الذي هو معتمد الخائضين في أثر الرأسمالية على الإنسان والتاريخ، انه يوقف على ما خفي في كتب الفلاسفة المؤسسين امثال مونتسيكيو وهوبز، وجون ستيوارت ميل، وآدم سميث من بحوث حول تغيير انسان ابن خلدون وتحويله عن غرائزه وعواطفه، ليصبح انسانا مدفوعا بمنفعته لا أكثر ، فيكسرون بهذا عجلة التاريخ ودورة الحضارة.
وهيرشمان يبحث مسار هذه الأفكار في القرنين السابع عشر والثامن عشر ،
September 19, 2010
Very good summary of the intellectual currents that lead from the early Christian view that the pursuit of money is less than virtuous, to the view that pursuit of self-interest in the form of commerce is beneficial to human freedom by its necessary restraint on the power of the state. Of course, this idealistic view has since proven flawed. However, it remains helpful in understanding the context in which Adam Smith and others wrote in favor of what would become capitalism, and for today of some of capitalism's benefits (at least for those who get money.) It also raises the issue that as capital is threaten, so too may be liberty, as those with capital prefer law and order over freedom.
Written in 1977, in my mind it raises interesting questions about the future of the developing world, especially China, and for America as the economic future of the Middle Class continues to be threatened.
Written in 1977, in my mind it raises interesting questions about the future of the developing world, especially China, and for America as the economic future of the Middle Class continues to be threatened.
March 22, 2021
خیلی جالب
ترجمه ی عالی، و کتابی غنی.
حقیقتا در اروپای قدیم انگار اگر کمی امتیاز اجتماعی و فرصت تحصیل و ... داشتی میتوانستی اندیشمند شوی و پرت بگویی. در خیالها سیر کنی، و چند قرن بعد دوباره حرفهایت را برخی بعنوان بنیانگذاران چه و چه، متفکری کلاسیک، تکرار کنند. آه.
به قول هیرشمن از بررسی تاریخ اندیشه ها نه حل مسائل، بلکه بالا بردن سطح اندیشیدن به مسائل را باید انتظار داشت.
کاش ادامه میداد خطر تاریخ را و به بعد از کینز هم می رسید. و نیز مارکسیسم را هم می شست.
شاید در کتابی دیگر چنین کرده باشد؟
هنگام خواندن این کتاب آن بیماری بد خواندنم گل کرده بود، انتظار اینکه تمامی ۱۵۰ص باید در یکی دو ساعت جذبم شوند و کتاب تمام شود و چون نمی شود ملال و اضطراب. براستی این فکر احمقانه از کجا منشا میگیرد؟ این هم یکی از هواهای نفسانی است. راه حل؟
ترجمه ی عالی، و کتابی غنی.
حقیقتا در اروپای قدیم انگار اگر کمی امتیاز اجتماعی و فرصت تحصیل و ... داشتی میتوانستی اندیشمند شوی و پرت بگویی. در خیالها سیر کنی، و چند قرن بعد دوباره حرفهایت را برخی بعنوان بنیانگذاران چه و چه، متفکری کلاسیک، تکرار کنند. آه.
به قول هیرشمن از بررسی تاریخ اندیشه ها نه حل مسائل، بلکه بالا بردن سطح اندیشیدن به مسائل را باید انتظار داشت.
کاش ادامه میداد خطر تاریخ را و به بعد از کینز هم می رسید. و نیز مارکسیسم را هم می شست.
شاید در کتابی دیگر چنین کرده باشد؟
هنگام خواندن این کتاب آن بیماری بد خواندنم گل کرده بود، انتظار اینکه تمامی ۱۵۰ص باید در یکی دو ساعت جذبم شوند و کتاب تمام شود و چون نمی شود ملال و اضطراب. براستی این فکر احمقانه از کجا منشا میگیرد؟ این هم یکی از هواهای نفسانی است. راه حل؟
January 5, 2023
“Et il est heureux pour les hommes d’être dans une situation, où, pendant que leurs passions leur inspirent la pensée d’être méchans, ils ont pourtant intérêt de ne pas l’être” - Montesquieu, De l’esprit des Lois
Philosophers have known about the passions of man and the ill effects they can have on both private and public life for centuries. The question of how to rein in the various human passions (or as we would call them today, emotions) has occupied the time of countless thinkers. Could there possibly be any way to “weaponize” one passion to combat and subordinate the others? St. Augustine spoke out against the lust for money, sex, and power. Interestingly, however, he noted seeking out power is the least odious of these three as it can suppress the desire for the other two passions. This is a question that Albert O. Hirschman takes up in his highly interdisciplinary contribution to economics and the appearance of the incipient capitalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in this book, first published in 1977.
Capitalism wasn’t always the dominant economic ideology. In the Middle Ages, usury – the act of using money to make more money – was thought to be a sin. An equally important problem was how to address the looming body of human passions writ large. Methods like the use of state suppression or “civilizing processes” tend to elide the problem and deny the reality of human nature. Eventually, opinion seemed to converge around an approach highly antithetical to the medieval take on usury. To quote Hirschman, “one set of passions, hitherto known as greed, avarice, or love of lucre, could be usefully employed to oppose and bridle such other passions as ambition, lust for power, or sexual lust.” John Maynard Keynes summed up this idea nicely: “Dangerous human proclivities can be canalized into comparatively harmless channels by the existence of opportunity for money-making and private wealth, which, if they cannot be satisfied in this way, may find their outlet in cruelty, the reckless pursuit of personal power and authority, and other forms of self-aggrandizement. It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens: and whilst the former is sometimes denounced as being but a means to the latter, sometimes at least it is an alternative.”
Is there any possible advantage in prioritizing greed and accumulation over the other passions? Many Enlightenment thinkers, especially in Scotland, seemed to think so. First, the desire for accumulation appeared to be universal, which introduced a kind of predictability to an otherwise complex, multifaceted human nature. Secondly, its presence made the motives of moral actors more transparent. When combined with a favored acquisitiveness, this gives rise to one of the most influential liberal principles of the Enlightenment: doux commerce (roughly translated as sweet, calm, gentle, or soft trade or commercial activity). Doux commerce holds that through the coming together of different people in the pursuit of commercial activity and cooperation, human passions can be lulled, and the interests of society and culture can be furthered. Thinkers from diverse backgrounds gradually arrived at this conclusion, including Dr. Johnson (who refers in Rasselas to the Arab who “ranged the country merely to get riches”) to David Hume who wrote in his essay “Of Interest” that “it is an infallible consequence of all industrious professions, to … make the love of gain prevail over the love of pleasure” and that commercial activity would “activate some benign human proclivities at the expense of some malignant ones – because of the expectation that, in this way, it would repress and perhaps atrophy the more destructive and disastrous components of human nature.”
In the second part of the book, “Improving the Political Order,” Hirschman analyzes how the idea of doux commerce was thought to affect society on a larger scale. Montesquieu’s economic thought relied on the importance of bills of exchange and arbitrage as safeguards against les grand coups d’autorite. For James Steuart, a contemporary of Adam Smith and an influential member of the Scottish Enlightenment, the benefit afforded by doux commerce resides in the complexity and vulnerability of the modern economy that will make arbitrary decisions and inferences on the part of the prince unthinkable. Steuart compares the commercial economy to “the delicacy of a watch,” likening the movements of “mercantile people” to the uniformity of a machine. Tocqueville and Adam Ferguson (still another important member of the Scottish Enlightenment) were much more willing to admit the occasionally negative consequence of a mercantile economy. They both accepted that economic expansion is “basically and simultaneously ambivalent in its political effects.” The violence of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars opened even more space for this ambiguity. This is, of course, an insight Karl Marx took to its logical conclusion in his political analysis of the revolutions of 1848 in which he theorized a slow declination of social conditions culminating in the eventual overthrow of the bourgeoisie. Marx’s contempt for the assumed civilizing tendencies of trade can be seen in Das Kapital in which he writes “Das ist der doux commerce!”
While Hirschman is clearly interested in delineating a particular set of ideas that eventually allow for the flourishing of an increasingly commercial economy, he never fails to present them in a clear, succinct way and with lucid language. While a prior knowledge of topics like psychology, philosophy and especially economics might further enrich an in-depth reading of the book, none of these are essential for understanding the book’s overarching theme. This is intellectual history the way it should be written: tightly, cogently, convincingly, and by a scholar whose broad and catholic grasp of the pertinent subject matters shines through on every page. Are human beings willing and able to utilize one passion to tamp down others? If so, what are the greater consequences for society if that occurs? In giving his answer Hirschman refuses to interject or cheerlead for any ideological approach, instead favoring an analytical archaeology of ideas that rewards careful reading and rereading.
Philosophers have known about the passions of man and the ill effects they can have on both private and public life for centuries. The question of how to rein in the various human passions (or as we would call them today, emotions) has occupied the time of countless thinkers. Could there possibly be any way to “weaponize” one passion to combat and subordinate the others? St. Augustine spoke out against the lust for money, sex, and power. Interestingly, however, he noted seeking out power is the least odious of these three as it can suppress the desire for the other two passions. This is a question that Albert O. Hirschman takes up in his highly interdisciplinary contribution to economics and the appearance of the incipient capitalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in this book, first published in 1977.
Capitalism wasn’t always the dominant economic ideology. In the Middle Ages, usury – the act of using money to make more money – was thought to be a sin. An equally important problem was how to address the looming body of human passions writ large. Methods like the use of state suppression or “civilizing processes” tend to elide the problem and deny the reality of human nature. Eventually, opinion seemed to converge around an approach highly antithetical to the medieval take on usury. To quote Hirschman, “one set of passions, hitherto known as greed, avarice, or love of lucre, could be usefully employed to oppose and bridle such other passions as ambition, lust for power, or sexual lust.” John Maynard Keynes summed up this idea nicely: “Dangerous human proclivities can be canalized into comparatively harmless channels by the existence of opportunity for money-making and private wealth, which, if they cannot be satisfied in this way, may find their outlet in cruelty, the reckless pursuit of personal power and authority, and other forms of self-aggrandizement. It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens: and whilst the former is sometimes denounced as being but a means to the latter, sometimes at least it is an alternative.”
Is there any possible advantage in prioritizing greed and accumulation over the other passions? Many Enlightenment thinkers, especially in Scotland, seemed to think so. First, the desire for accumulation appeared to be universal, which introduced a kind of predictability to an otherwise complex, multifaceted human nature. Secondly, its presence made the motives of moral actors more transparent. When combined with a favored acquisitiveness, this gives rise to one of the most influential liberal principles of the Enlightenment: doux commerce (roughly translated as sweet, calm, gentle, or soft trade or commercial activity). Doux commerce holds that through the coming together of different people in the pursuit of commercial activity and cooperation, human passions can be lulled, and the interests of society and culture can be furthered. Thinkers from diverse backgrounds gradually arrived at this conclusion, including Dr. Johnson (who refers in Rasselas to the Arab who “ranged the country merely to get riches”) to David Hume who wrote in his essay “Of Interest” that “it is an infallible consequence of all industrious professions, to … make the love of gain prevail over the love of pleasure” and that commercial activity would “activate some benign human proclivities at the expense of some malignant ones – because of the expectation that, in this way, it would repress and perhaps atrophy the more destructive and disastrous components of human nature.”
In the second part of the book, “Improving the Political Order,” Hirschman analyzes how the idea of doux commerce was thought to affect society on a larger scale. Montesquieu’s economic thought relied on the importance of bills of exchange and arbitrage as safeguards against les grand coups d’autorite. For James Steuart, a contemporary of Adam Smith and an influential member of the Scottish Enlightenment, the benefit afforded by doux commerce resides in the complexity and vulnerability of the modern economy that will make arbitrary decisions and inferences on the part of the prince unthinkable. Steuart compares the commercial economy to “the delicacy of a watch,” likening the movements of “mercantile people” to the uniformity of a machine. Tocqueville and Adam Ferguson (still another important member of the Scottish Enlightenment) were much more willing to admit the occasionally negative consequence of a mercantile economy. They both accepted that economic expansion is “basically and simultaneously ambivalent in its political effects.” The violence of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars opened even more space for this ambiguity. This is, of course, an insight Karl Marx took to its logical conclusion in his political analysis of the revolutions of 1848 in which he theorized a slow declination of social conditions culminating in the eventual overthrow of the bourgeoisie. Marx’s contempt for the assumed civilizing tendencies of trade can be seen in Das Kapital in which he writes “Das ist der doux commerce!”
While Hirschman is clearly interested in delineating a particular set of ideas that eventually allow for the flourishing of an increasingly commercial economy, he never fails to present them in a clear, succinct way and with lucid language. While a prior knowledge of topics like psychology, philosophy and especially economics might further enrich an in-depth reading of the book, none of these are essential for understanding the book’s overarching theme. This is intellectual history the way it should be written: tightly, cogently, convincingly, and by a scholar whose broad and catholic grasp of the pertinent subject matters shines through on every page. Are human beings willing and able to utilize one passion to tamp down others? If so, what are the greater consequences for society if that occurs? In giving his answer Hirschman refuses to interject or cheerlead for any ideological approach, instead favoring an analytical archaeology of ideas that rewards careful reading and rereading.
November 6, 2021
If you don't mind feeling stupid and uneducated by comparison, read this book. Hirschman moves brilliantly across a breathtakingly wide range of classics in political philosophy and economic thought to trace the origins of some of the now taken-for-granted behavioral assumptions underpinning contemporary economic theory. The huge historical paradox he uncovers is that the very features of capitalism that we now view as shallow commercialism were precisely the features that political philosophers in the 17 and 18C saw as essential to taming what they saw as the (more) destructive passions that otherwise governed human behavior. We basically got what we asked for.
January 2, 2023
In arguments, it is usually the role of the pedant to argue over the meaning of words. Yet, especially when they serve as signifiers of ideology, it is particularly important to see them as historical entities. What we mean, hope for, and despise when we say "capitalism" is as historically constrained as it is necessarily reduced whenever language is involved.
This is particularly troublesome when thinking about the big questions that capitalism was proposed to answer, namely, whether there could be a post-medieval precept or belief that could save man's soul from its passions while preserving society as we knew it. As Hirschman shows, the ideas used to justify capitalism (chief of which was the maxim that the passion for profit could subdue much more dangerous and anti-social passions) are absurd on their face today to most if not all people. But these arguments were not the musings of the 17th or 18th version of crypto shills selling snake oil on Twitter, but those of philosophers like Montesquieu and Steuart who were deep within European centers of power burning the midnight oil over whether human nature has within itself the ability to save us from ourselves.
Zizek says that utopia is in a sense a product of emergency. It is hard perhaps today to think of capitalism as anything close to utopia, but precisely because of this it is so critical, as Hirshman thought, to trace the history of ideas so we may learn not just about its unintended consequences but also of its unrealized expectations. A dose of humility in our certainty over what we think the right ideological course post-capitalism is certainly in order.
This is particularly troublesome when thinking about the big questions that capitalism was proposed to answer, namely, whether there could be a post-medieval precept or belief that could save man's soul from its passions while preserving society as we knew it. As Hirschman shows, the ideas used to justify capitalism (chief of which was the maxim that the passion for profit could subdue much more dangerous and anti-social passions) are absurd on their face today to most if not all people. But these arguments were not the musings of the 17th or 18th version of crypto shills selling snake oil on Twitter, but those of philosophers like Montesquieu and Steuart who were deep within European centers of power burning the midnight oil over whether human nature has within itself the ability to save us from ourselves.
Zizek says that utopia is in a sense a product of emergency. It is hard perhaps today to think of capitalism as anything close to utopia, but precisely because of this it is so critical, as Hirshman thought, to trace the history of ideas so we may learn not just about its unintended consequences but also of its unrealized expectations. A dose of humility in our certainty over what we think the right ideological course post-capitalism is certainly in order.
January 1, 2018
This short book was included in the bibliographies of many books I've read, so I thought it was time to read it. Hirschman argues that capitalism developed as a means by the rising merchant class of the late middle ages to check the nearly tyrannical powers of the local aristocracy. Money making was a frowned upon activity, with avarice being sinful. Commerce, however, appealed to the rational interests of merchants and traders, and as their wealth and influence grew they counteracted the unruly passions of the feudal leaders. The hope of theorists of the early modern period was that this would result in the wider spread of prosperity, resulting in far less wealth inequality. Rational interests would overcome spontaneous passions; for a short time it did. Alas, however, by the time Adam Smith writes his classics, he had united interests and passions again; under the influence of the passions, people's interests were no longer satisfied with modest results--instead of being socially discouraged, avarice become an acceptable, indeed worthy, goal. Instead of balancing the greed of the powerful with the sober and relatively modest merchants of what became the middle class, capitalism has become what it had once checked: a powerful driver of inequality. A wonderful analysis with insights derived from the study of Machiavelli, Hume, Bacon, Spinoza, Smith, Montesquieu, and others from the Scottish Enlightenment and the French physiocrats. Very enlightening.
March 5, 2022
كتاب عمدة في الاقتصاد السياسي، وفيه جواهر فلسفية لا تخفى على طالبها
والأهم أنه طريقة بديعة في النظر والربط بين الشخوص والمقالات والحوادث، ، وهو يُعد من جُملة المكتشفات الفكرية.
والأهم أنه طريقة بديعة في النظر والربط بين الشخوص والمقالات والحوادث، ، وهو يُعد من جُملة المكتشفات الفكرية.
April 16, 2025
Hirschman's *The Passions and the Interests* is a window on a specific set of arguments that were offered for capitalism (avant la lettre) in the early modern period. Its proponents were concerned with the passions: Montesquieu and James Steuart looked out at the world and saw it torn apart by contending aristocrats dominated by their desires for power, glory, and sexual gratification. But perhaps the passions could be played off against one another, with avarice taming the demands of pride and lust. And calculating commerce, with its need for peace and stability, could tame the passionate, aristocratic class. I found this all very interesting, in no small part because I'm unfamiliar with the underlying texts and the way this language of the passions and interests was connected to republicanism by these thinkers.
I think Hirschman is right to say that there's a kind of historical amnesia around these arguments—they no longer feature meaningfully in capitalism's self-justifying discourses. Though perhaps you hear echoes of them in early 21st century arguments that China could be tamed by integrating it into global trade flows, or the less serious and now risible "McDonalds Peace Theory" of the 1990s. Hirschman thinks that this amnesia is at least in part due to the obvious falsification of these arguments: can anyone at this late date truly argue our civilization, dominated by business and commerce such as it is, is the stuff merely of rational, plodding, and prudent calculation, with no whiff of struggle, the pursuit of glory, or individual caprice? It's perhaps particularly amusing to think through these arguments at this historical moment, when the political life of the United States is dominated by two businessmen, our ostensible taming class, and the overwhelming economic mood is uncertainty in the face of their erratic indulgence of their passions.
I think Hirschman is right to say that there's a kind of historical amnesia around these arguments—they no longer feature meaningfully in capitalism's self-justifying discourses. Though perhaps you hear echoes of them in early 21st century arguments that China could be tamed by integrating it into global trade flows, or the less serious and now risible "McDonalds Peace Theory" of the 1990s. Hirschman thinks that this amnesia is at least in part due to the obvious falsification of these arguments: can anyone at this late date truly argue our civilization, dominated by business and commerce such as it is, is the stuff merely of rational, plodding, and prudent calculation, with no whiff of struggle, the pursuit of glory, or individual caprice? It's perhaps particularly amusing to think through these arguments at this historical moment, when the political life of the United States is dominated by two businessmen, our ostensible taming class, and the overwhelming economic mood is uncertainty in the face of their erratic indulgence of their passions.
Read
September 6, 2023an excellent exercise in intellectual history, keenly aware of its motivation and scope, tracing the history of a particular lineage of thinking about the motivating forces of human action and the reactions of that lineage, at various points, to the nascent social structures of commercial society and capitalism. hirschman is modest but insistent in his project to trace the place of the passions in political thought in late medieval europe, the extraction and narrowing of the concept of "interest" to a specifically economic one, their counterposal and the position of the latter as restraining the former, their sudden collapse into one, and the wide range of ambivalent expressions of the status of commerce as a restraint on human action. plus, a brief appeal to the practice of intellectual history - that we might avoid the repetition of errors of thought, which might be replicated far more exactly than errors of action.
October 28, 2021
Very smart and very interesting. Worth it just for the insight that Marcuse's criticism of capitalism as respressive is 'a bit unfair, for capitalism was precisely expected and supposed to repress certain human drives and proclivities and to fashion a less multifaceted, less unpredictable, and more 'one-dimensional' human personality' (132). Burn.
November 3, 2019
Hirschman is a master rhetorician and scholar. His ability to explain complex concepts in a lucid, memorable manner makes even economic theory interesting to read, which is, in my mind, an incredible feat. His arguments for the prioritization of intellectual history over histories of events are compelling.
April 20, 2021
"[...]the special affinity of rational calculation implicit in th concept of interest with the nature of rational economic interests for these activities eventually monopolizing the contents of the concepts"
Albert Hirschman provides an intellectual history of the rise of capitalism. For Hirschman, unlike Max Weber and Karl Marx's theories of capitalism, there are continuities in the rise of capitalism from feudalism. For Marx capitalism arose from the contradictory forces built into feudalism's programming, and for Weber Protestantism saw the ideology of thrift, saving and reinvestment as a driving force for the accumulation and consolidation of capitalist firms. Hirschman argues that this is wrong, and demonstrates through detailed literary analysis, that many of the assumptions which supported capitalism were merely beliefs lying in the ideological plane beforehand, and were adopted or tweaked to fit the shifting demands. The analysis is not as convincing as Weber or Marx, but Hirschman does provide insight into the important intellectual currents (Adam Smith, Mandeville, Locke, Hume, Rochefoucauld, Steuart, etc), and the way in which they were reinterpreted to suit the new system and its programming.
Albert Hirschman provides an intellectual history of the rise of capitalism. For Hirschman, unlike Max Weber and Karl Marx's theories of capitalism, there are continuities in the rise of capitalism from feudalism. For Marx capitalism arose from the contradictory forces built into feudalism's programming, and for Weber Protestantism saw the ideology of thrift, saving and reinvestment as a driving force for the accumulation and consolidation of capitalist firms. Hirschman argues that this is wrong, and demonstrates through detailed literary analysis, that many of the assumptions which supported capitalism were merely beliefs lying in the ideological plane beforehand, and were adopted or tweaked to fit the shifting demands. The analysis is not as convincing as Weber or Marx, but Hirschman does provide insight into the important intellectual currents (Adam Smith, Mandeville, Locke, Hume, Rochefoucauld, Steuart, etc), and the way in which they were reinterpreted to suit the new system and its programming.
July 29, 2024
"In a sense, the triumph of capitalism, like that of many modern tyrants, owes much to the widespread refusal to take it seriously or to believe it capable of great design or achievement."
- Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests (59)
A gracefully argued critique of Marxist/Weberian accounts of capitalist ideology as something new and alien to the early modern world. Yes there was a change in how money-making went from a shameful, dishonourable practice to a revered, admirable one, but the transition was granular and iterative, not abrupt and radical. It only looks that way because of how unusual Adam Smith's reworking of the tradition was once the system it defended needed a fresh flag to wave in celebration of its triumph.
Rather than seeing some individualistic protestant work ethic arising in opposition to the prevailing aristocratic ethos of the feudal societies that birthed it, Hirschman looks for continuities in intellectual thought to show how the unique quirks of capitalist apologia emerged endogenously alongside capitalism itself as political philosophers responded to the pressing challenges of the moment, not knowing where the logic of their own arguments would lead. All in all it's worth the price of admission alone for its methodology of how to do a history of ideas:
"In dealing here with the history of ideas I do not aspire to [be] iconoclastic; but, [to] present some evidence that the new arose out of the old to a greater extent than has generally been appreciated. To portray a lengthy ideological change or transition as an endogenous process is of course more complex than to depict it as the rise of an independently conceived, insurgent ideology concurrent with the decline of a hitherto dominant ethic. A portrayal of this sort involves the identification of a sequence of concatenated ideas and propositions whose final outcome is necessarily hidden from the proponents of the individual links, at least in the early stages of the process; for they would have shuddered - and revised their thinking - had they realized where their ideas would ultimately lead." (4-5)
The core argument is that Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' was drawn from a long intellectual tradition of the 'countervailing idea', dating back to at least Augustine, which believed that different human vices could become a check on each other. Rather than these arguments referring to the war in the heart of individuals across society, however, the great innovation in these theories was in modelling how the 'passions' of great princes might be disciplined by the 'interests' of the states they ruled. As European kingdoms crawled out of the Thirty Years War, dragging their freshly militarised economies out across the bloody giblets of eight million corpses, the main political priority on everyone's minds was how to develop political structures that could restrain the worst impulses of great men.
Rather than just repressing great passions, political philosophy came to consider how the state might take on a transformative role, harnessing our bad passions in ways that effectively restrained our worst ones. At first these ideas were directed at containing the irrational madness of despotic princes, but as economic shifts handed greater portions of power to the middle classes, a subtle assumption in these theories slipped into modelling how to tame the powers of governments themselves through the division of powers between departments. Meanwhile, commerce was originally defended in mercantilist doctrine for leading to a range of benefits across political, social, and even moral domains, but the arrival of Adam Smith carved off all reference to these holistic benefits in favour of a single-minded focus on economic, material growth instead.
This pattern holds across the entire book. Early expressions of pro-capitalist ideas were bold and expansive, attempting to catalogue the entire gamut of human cruelties that philosophers hoped this new system would harness and tame, before later theories quietly replaced these ambitions with the suggestion that some passions are worse than others, and that economic acquisitiveness was an altogether benign, rational passion-interest hybrid with the singular capacity to overrule its rivals. Before Adam Smith's one-dimensionally rational homo economicus, men like Giambattista Vico would perceive society as manipulated by an invisible logic extending across a wide spectrum of human malice:
"Out of ferocity, avarice, and ambition, the three vices which lead all mankind astray, [society] makes national defence, commerce, and politics, and thereby causes the strength, the wealth, and the wisdom of the republics; out of these three great vices which would certainly destroy man on earth, society thus causes the civil happiness to emerge. This principle proves the existence of divine providence: through its intelligent laws the passions of men who are entirely occupied by the pursuit of their private utility are transformed into a civil order which permits men to live in human society."
- Giambattista Vico, Scienza nuova
The terminology here was always evasive, but as a general rule the direction was to make these words successively tamer, robbing these earlier models of their colourful grimness. The outrageous, shocking admiration for "passion" and "vice" in the paradoxical formulations of Bernard Mandeville would be translated by men like Adam Smith into blander, inoffensive terms like "advantage" or "interest". Meanwhile "interest," inevitably came to take on a host of contradictory and tautological definitions - with the core message shifting from a 17th century pessimism about how the interests are ruined by the passions to a more optimistic, Enlightenment-era celebration of passions enabling constructive systemic processes that created collective goods out of individual selfishness:
"Once passion was deemed destructive and reason ineffectual, the view that human action could be exhaustively described by attribution to either one or the other meant an exceedingly sombre outlook for humanity. A message of hope was therefore conveyed by the wedging of interest in between the two traditional categories of human motivation. Interest was seen to partake in effect of the better nature of each, as the passion of self-love upgraded and contained by reason, and as reason given direction and force by that passion. The resulting hybrid form of human action was considered exempt from both the destructiveness of passion and the ineffectuality of reason. No wonder that the doctrine of interest was received at the time as a veritable message of salvation!" (44-45)
In the process of redeeming the passions in this way, however, the 'interests' were narrowed by the time of Adam Smith into a solely material conception of economic goods, which means that many earlier aphorisms that celebrated the 'interests' as an expansive range of human behaviours were misquoted by later generations as condemnations of money-grubbing! Nevertheless, the narrowing allowed for greater intellectual specialisation, and had the odd effect of flipping Hobbes' earlier moroseness over man's insatiability into a cure for the horror of human inconstancy, because if men are constantly trying to line their own pockets that at least gives hope that you can predict their behaviour going forwards.
With the wild passions of mankind on everyone's mind, it's no wonder Dr. Johnson was able to so blithely quip that, "There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money." Business pursuits were 'innocent'; the real politics was happening elsewhere, they thought; the real horrors were written across the walls in blood and fire, even as the ground beneath those battlefields was being slowly rebuilt according to capitalist logics.
In the second part of the book, Hirschman endeavours to prove that this 'interests vs passions' argument sounds weird to us because Adam Smith effectively buried it, with this burial being of vital importance to the emerging currents of capitalist ideology. Where earlier arguments for capitalism had argued that rational trade practices would avert the political dangers of powerful princes, Smith stressed the economic benefits that would accrue to the great mob of humankind, in the process collapsing the distinction between interests and passions by using the words interchangeably. Earlier political philosophers couldn't have given less of a damn about the wider human population - playwrights weren't exactly writing tragedies about peasants after all, because who cared about their simple-minded passions? It was the princes you had to worry about! The full-souled, complicated men of long sceptres and great stature! But Smith ended the speculation about interest-motivated effects on passionate behaviour, instead recentering subsequent policy debates on the idea that the material welfare of mankind is best served by letting each individual pursue his own material self-interest.
Of course it's hard to obliterate the entire intellectual tradition that birthed your thesis without leaving a host of paradoxes in your wake like landmines for future followers to blow themselves up on, but Smith's work was nevertheless well suited for his historical moment. The Montesquieu-esque optimism towards expanding commerce as a pacifying process became thoroughly bruised by the French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, and awkwardly pugilistic realities of colonialism, so something new was needed, although that hasn't stopped later resurrections of the earlier theme in modernist liberal thought.
In the third part Hirschman tries to understand the political imperatives that colour how this debate is remembered. At its heart is the canny observation that capitalism was defended for reasons that plainly did not come to pass - but, in the process, it empowered a new class of capitalists who, in profiting so firmly from the new state of affairs, had a vested interest in repressing awareness of the fact that the system they benefitted from operated in direct contradiction to the principles upon which its architects had first defended its establishment.
"This is not just a matter of the original actors keeping their self-respect, but is essential if the succeeding power holders are to be assured of the legitimacy of the new order: what social order could long survive the dual awareness that it was adopted with the firm expectation that it would solve certain problems, and that it clearly and abysmally fails to do so?" (131)
This has some rather darkly comic effects when one considers the traditional Marxist complaints that capitalism robs us of the ability to be 'fully human', because capitalism was originally defended for doing exactly that. If humans are violent, capricious monsters ruled by a range of unpredictable, multifaceted passions that risk plunging the world into chaos the moment some trigger-twitchy prince gets his hands on a nuclear button, then its no wonder that a generation of political thinkers set themselves to the task of finding ways to creating a system that was expected to "repress certain human drives and proclivities and to fashion a less multifaceted, less unpredictable, and more 'one-dimensional' human personality." (132) The bourgeois blandness and mundanely unheroic disposition of the modern world that romantic revolutionaries condemned was basically what their philosophical ancestors had been aiming for all along, the grass always being greener in the Other's century.
Far from a clean teleology, Hirschman sees the history of ideas as even more doomed to repeat itself than the history of events, which makes careful reconstructions of forgotten arguments all the more important for how easily we can forget their plainer elaboration of complex problems that we are too deeply buried in to perceive with fresh eyes. In an odd echo of Dr Johnson's guileless notion that money-making was an 'innocent' interest, Hirschman suggests that Keynes' glib defence of capitalism, "It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens," reverts to an earlier advocation of innocent capitalistic virtue that had already fallen by the wayside. We're back to the passions and interests all over again, and history stretches its hungry mouth to bellow a foul laugh through rotten, bloody teeth.
The grand heroes of this journey are mostly familiar names: Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Hobbes, Hume, Rochefoucauld, Steuart, and Smith etc, but the cast list of incidental contributors is surprisingly extensive for such a small volume, though Hirschman does have an odd habit of leaping across his timeline quite a bit which can make some of the progressions difficult to track. Nevertheless, this is a sophisticated piece, and one that admirably succeeds at its stated goal "not to resolve issues, but to raise the level of the debate." (135)
February 27, 2025
This is easily one of my favorite books I’ve ever read. The lucidity of Hirschman’s storytelling is mesmerizing. He effortlessly navigates the past to dissect the underpinnings of capitalism, transforming what might have been a dry economic analysis into a profound moral and philosophical inquiry.
Throughout the book, Hirschman explores how the meanings of words—like “passion” and “interest”—have evolved over time. He draws on the insights of past philosophers to shed light on the societal transition unfolding before us. One central question stands out: how did the religions of the poor morph into a religion focused on money-making? It’s almost surreal that St. Augustine, of all people, plays a pivotal role in the shift toward capitalism.
I’m truly in awe of how accessible and engaging the entire narrative is. Hirschman’s work exudes intellectual rigor without sacrificing clarity; his refusal to construct “grands histoires” transforms him into an explorer.
The word “saudade” perfectly captures my emotions. Reading this book felt like meeting a kindred spirit while waiting in line—you’re there for the destination, but the journey becomes so enjoyable that you never want it to end. Truly incredible.
Throughout the book, Hirschman explores how the meanings of words—like “passion” and “interest”—have evolved over time. He draws on the insights of past philosophers to shed light on the societal transition unfolding before us. One central question stands out: how did the religions of the poor morph into a religion focused on money-making? It’s almost surreal that St. Augustine, of all people, plays a pivotal role in the shift toward capitalism.
I’m truly in awe of how accessible and engaging the entire narrative is. Hirschman’s work exudes intellectual rigor without sacrificing clarity; his refusal to construct “grands histoires” transforms him into an explorer.
The word “saudade” perfectly captures my emotions. Reading this book felt like meeting a kindred spirit while waiting in line—you’re there for the destination, but the journey becomes so enjoyable that you never want it to end. Truly incredible.
January 10, 2025
The Passions and the Interests is a very thought-provoking book written with a clarity and tightness of argument very difficult to find in many intellectual histories. Paradoxically, by threading a weave through the centuries of thought, from Machiavelli to Montesquieu, Hirschman is able to uncover the profound poverty of many justifications and rationalization of modern day capitalism.
The illuminating insight that breaks through Hirschman's narrative is that for most thinkers of commercial society prior to a dominant capitalism, the economic order could not be separated from the moral one. Questions about political economy did not arise from the quest to find optimal rates of growth or maximize preference satisfaction, but from the urgency (arising from the continental wars and religious turmoil of the 17th-18th century) of the need to eliminate tyranny, and construct a society which allows individuals can flourish in a holistic manner, viewed not just through income or economic status. This historical perspective, brilliantly reconstructed through the words of the great thinkers themselves allows us to see the 'intended but unrealized' content of capitalism, and perhaps use it to hold it to account on that basis.
As a man of the left, this book left me convinced that there is a lot to be gained by trying to sketch ways out of contemporary capitalism inspired by the 'Montesquieu-Steuart thesis.' Our 21st century starting point, ironically enough, is a total inversion of these thinkers. The greatest source of tyranny is not the power of the sovereign which might be balanced by a growing commercial sector in our society, but rather the weakness of any public bodies in the face of multinational corporations and the global bourgeoise which transcends borders in application of its economic dominance. The greatest obstacle to improving public resources is that the unthinkable scale of the resources that can be mobilised by globalised capitalism, also 'avoid our grasp when we attempt to seize it.' I expect that contrasting our inverted paradigm to the original might be a fertile enterprise for the future.
This text has also allowed me to have a much better hold of the 'English Political Economy' part of Marx (to paraphrase Lenin). Two parallels are particularly suggestive: (1) Millar's class based analysis of the changing political conditions as the merchant classes grow powerful is extremely close to the way Marx prophesized about the upcoming empowerment of the working class. Chiefly, both classes were able to organise better due to a shared recognition of objectives, and benefitted significantly from the increasing concentrations in the cities and towns. (2) Spinoza's justification for the passion for money as a countervailing force against the others relies upon its status as waypoint on the path to reason and love of god is quite similar to that of Marx's theory of socialism leading to capitalism. In fact, combined with the later allusion to Proudhon's advocacy for private property to balance against state tyranny, the book offers a fresh perspective to analyse the great schism between red and black. While both criticise the tyranny of private property and the state, Marxists would rather rely upon a dictatorship of the proletariat to abolish the former using the latter first, while the Anarchists might find their home opposing the state before the market.
Overall, I would recommend this book to any and all readers interested in the history of economic thought, and especially to those who wish to have a stronger historical foundation upon which to base their arguments critical of mainstream economic assumptions.
The illuminating insight that breaks through Hirschman's narrative is that for most thinkers of commercial society prior to a dominant capitalism, the economic order could not be separated from the moral one. Questions about political economy did not arise from the quest to find optimal rates of growth or maximize preference satisfaction, but from the urgency (arising from the continental wars and religious turmoil of the 17th-18th century) of the need to eliminate tyranny, and construct a society which allows individuals can flourish in a holistic manner, viewed not just through income or economic status. This historical perspective, brilliantly reconstructed through the words of the great thinkers themselves allows us to see the 'intended but unrealized' content of capitalism, and perhaps use it to hold it to account on that basis.
As a man of the left, this book left me convinced that there is a lot to be gained by trying to sketch ways out of contemporary capitalism inspired by the 'Montesquieu-Steuart thesis.' Our 21st century starting point, ironically enough, is a total inversion of these thinkers. The greatest source of tyranny is not the power of the sovereign which might be balanced by a growing commercial sector in our society, but rather the weakness of any public bodies in the face of multinational corporations and the global bourgeoise which transcends borders in application of its economic dominance. The greatest obstacle to improving public resources is that the unthinkable scale of the resources that can be mobilised by globalised capitalism, also 'avoid our grasp when we attempt to seize it.' I expect that contrasting our inverted paradigm to the original might be a fertile enterprise for the future.
This text has also allowed me to have a much better hold of the 'English Political Economy' part of Marx (to paraphrase Lenin). Two parallels are particularly suggestive: (1) Millar's class based analysis of the changing political conditions as the merchant classes grow powerful is extremely close to the way Marx prophesized about the upcoming empowerment of the working class. Chiefly, both classes were able to organise better due to a shared recognition of objectives, and benefitted significantly from the increasing concentrations in the cities and towns. (2) Spinoza's justification for the passion for money as a countervailing force against the others relies upon its status as waypoint on the path to reason and love of god is quite similar to that of Marx's theory of socialism leading to capitalism. In fact, combined with the later allusion to Proudhon's advocacy for private property to balance against state tyranny, the book offers a fresh perspective to analyse the great schism between red and black. While both criticise the tyranny of private property and the state, Marxists would rather rely upon a dictatorship of the proletariat to abolish the former using the latter first, while the Anarchists might find their home opposing the state before the market.
Overall, I would recommend this book to any and all readers interested in the history of economic thought, and especially to those who wish to have a stronger historical foundation upon which to base their arguments critical of mainstream economic assumptions.
December 3, 2022
The Passions and the Interests is a masterfully concise demonstration of the power of intellectual history. Hirschman reconstructs a now-antiquated line of thought, exemplified by the Baron de Montesquieu and James Steuart, advocating for the spread of commercial society as a means to achieve peace by countervailing human "interests" against the destructive "passions." The advocates of capitalism, on this view, explicitly hoped it would suppress the diverse and unpredictable passions that they saw as leading to chaos and violence. Subsequent history showed this view was naively optimistic. Ironically, though, later critics forgot these debates and argued that capitalism flattened the personality; "In sum, capitalism was supposed to accomplish exactly what was soon to be denounced as its worst feature." (p. 132) Likewise, later defenders of capitalism forgot the intellectual history of their forebears, thus unwittingly rehashing the same arguments with the same gaps between expectation and reality.
The best summary of this pattern, and the subsequent value that study of the history of ideas can add, comes from Hirschman himself:
"To open a brief parenthesis, it may be remarked that Santayana's maxim "those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it" is more likely to hold rigorously for the history of ideas than for the history of events. The latter, as we all know, never quite repeats itself; but vaguely similar circumstances at two different and perhaps distant points of time may very well give rise to identical and identically flawed thought-responses if the earlier intellectual episode has been forgotten. The reason is of course that thought abstracts from a number of circumstances which it holds to be nonessential but which constitute the uniqueness of every single historical situation." (p. 133)
"I conclude that both critics and defenders of capitalism could improve upon their arguments through knowledge of the episode in intellectual history that has been recounted here. This is probably all one can ask of history, and of the history of ideas in particular: not to resolve issues, but to raise the level of the debate." (p.135)
The best summary of this pattern, and the subsequent value that study of the history of ideas can add, comes from Hirschman himself:
"To open a brief parenthesis, it may be remarked that Santayana's maxim "those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it" is more likely to hold rigorously for the history of ideas than for the history of events. The latter, as we all know, never quite repeats itself; but vaguely similar circumstances at two different and perhaps distant points of time may very well give rise to identical and identically flawed thought-responses if the earlier intellectual episode has been forgotten. The reason is of course that thought abstracts from a number of circumstances which it holds to be nonessential but which constitute the uniqueness of every single historical situation." (p. 133)
"I conclude that both critics and defenders of capitalism could improve upon their arguments through knowledge of the episode in intellectual history that has been recounted here. This is probably all one can ask of history, and of the history of ideas in particular: not to resolve issues, but to raise the level of the debate." (p.135)
November 24, 2021
This book takes you on nice tour of the intellectual history of capitalism, especially how metaphors regarding statecraft were transformed into arguments for commerce.
Start with the idea of competing passions within the mind of the Prince, where avarice is identified as a "good" passion, a reasonable passion that might dominate and the others, until it becomes economic "interest", no longer a passion. But the battleground slowly shifts from the mind of the Prince, to the body politic, where the passionate unreasonable king must be tamed by the reasoned economic interests of commerce, and eventually the conscious efforts of the mercantile class. Finally, with Adam Smith we find that commerce, the accumulation of wealth, doesn't *tame* the passions, but becomes the universal passion through which all the other passions must be achieved.
My main complaint is that Hirschman argues that the idea of commerce taming the state has failed. Sure, commerce hasn't prevented war, but it does seem to have been largely successful at preventing states from arbitrarily seizing the property of the business class, which was another one of its explicit goals. In other words, "the interests" have never stopped trying to tame "the passions". but now in this democratic age the masses, not the kings, are the passionate ones who must be tamed.
Start with the idea of competing passions within the mind of the Prince, where avarice is identified as a "good" passion, a reasonable passion that might dominate and the others, until it becomes economic "interest", no longer a passion. But the battleground slowly shifts from the mind of the Prince, to the body politic, where the passionate unreasonable king must be tamed by the reasoned economic interests of commerce, and eventually the conscious efforts of the mercantile class. Finally, with Adam Smith we find that commerce, the accumulation of wealth, doesn't *tame* the passions, but becomes the universal passion through which all the other passions must be achieved.
My main complaint is that Hirschman argues that the idea of commerce taming the state has failed. Sure, commerce hasn't prevented war, but it does seem to have been largely successful at preventing states from arbitrarily seizing the property of the business class, which was another one of its explicit goals. In other words, "the interests" have never stopped trying to tame "the passions". but now in this democratic age the masses, not the kings, are the passionate ones who must be tamed.
February 25, 2021
This short book is about how, before anyone argued that capitalism was efficient or whatever, policymakers (princes, counselors, etc.) viewed it as a way of restraining the human passions, of preventing war and civil war. And it more or less failed to do this.
If you listen to different people talk about the book, it's clear that the book contains a diverse assortment of interesting arguments, but two stood out to me. First, that at the dawn of capitalism, it was widely believed that the pursuit of material self-interest was some how more harmless than say, pursuit of pleasure or power. This is astonishing and odd, and I think pretty clearly wrong, and Hirschman does a good job of explaining why people might have thought this. Second, this is an interesting case study of social science: Hirschman traced the birth and collapse of a new paradigm, and the changes that that theory brought about. He does this with skill, but attaching ideas to actions is notoriously difficult and he merely sketches out a connection.
If you listen to different people talk about the book, it's clear that the book contains a diverse assortment of interesting arguments, but two stood out to me. First, that at the dawn of capitalism, it was widely believed that the pursuit of material self-interest was some how more harmless than say, pursuit of pleasure or power. This is astonishing and odd, and I think pretty clearly wrong, and Hirschman does a good job of explaining why people might have thought this. Second, this is an interesting case study of social science: Hirschman traced the birth and collapse of a new paradigm, and the changes that that theory brought about. He does this with skill, but attaching ideas to actions is notoriously difficult and he merely sketches out a connection.
July 28, 2023
محاولة لإعادة قراءة الرأسمالية وتدعيم بنائها المهترئ بأصول وأسس فلسفية سياسية.
الكتاب عبارة عن محاورة تبدأ بابن خلدون ونظرته في دورة الدول الاقتصادية بدءًا بالنهضة والترف ثم الانهيار والفقر وهكذا، ثم ميكافيلي الذي جاء محاولًا تمديد فترة الترف مؤمنًا بنظرية ابن خلدون، وأخيرًا نقاش حامٍ وبناءٍ بين علماء الاجتماع والسياسية في القرنين السابع والثامن عشر بإدارة ألبرت هيرشمان(المؤلف) خلاصته أن نوازع البشر للطغيان والكسب والجشع لا يمكن ترويضها إلا بالبحث عن مصلحة فردية كجمع المال والذي يسهم في نهاية المطاف بتحسين وضع المجتمع والدولة.
ولذلك صدّر الكتاب بعبارة مونتسيكو التي جاءت في كتاب الشرائع:"من حسن طالع البشر أن يكونوا في حال إذا حثتهم فيها نوازعهم على أن يكونوا خبثاء، فإن لهم مصلحة في ألا يكونوا كذلك"
الكتاب متعوب عليه بالمجمل ودسم نوعًا ما، ويحتاج إلى تركيز وصفاء ذهن.
الكتاب عندما يتحدث عن الرأسمالية وعواقبها السياسية او الاجتماعية فهو يتحدث من وجهة نظر غربية ولا يهتم بأي مصائب خارج رقعة القارة العجوز أو الولايات المتّحدة، فتنبّه.
الملحق لـ محمد شعبان صوان في نهاية الكتاب أعجبني وإن كان في كلامه حدّة تشبه حدّة جميل الرويلي اتجاه الموضوع.
الترجمة ممتازة.
الكتاب عبارة عن محاورة تبدأ بابن خلدون ونظرته في دورة الدول الاقتصادية بدءًا بالنهضة والترف ثم الانهيار والفقر وهكذا، ثم ميكافيلي الذي جاء محاولًا تمديد فترة الترف مؤمنًا بنظرية ابن خلدون، وأخيرًا نقاش حامٍ وبناءٍ بين علماء الاجتماع والسياسية في القرنين السابع والثامن عشر بإدارة ألبرت هيرشمان(المؤلف) خلاصته أن نوازع البشر للطغيان والكسب والجشع لا يمكن ترويضها إلا بالبحث عن مصلحة فردية كجمع المال والذي يسهم في نهاية المطاف بتحسين وضع المجتمع والدولة.
ولذلك صدّر الكتاب بعبارة مونتسيكو التي جاءت في كتاب الشرائع:"من حسن طالع البشر أن يكونوا في حال إذا حثتهم فيها نوازعهم على أن يكونوا خبثاء، فإن لهم مصلحة في ألا يكونوا كذلك"
الكتاب متعوب عليه بالمجمل ودسم نوعًا ما، ويحتاج إلى تركيز وصفاء ذهن.
الكتاب عندما يتحدث عن الرأسمالية وعواقبها السياسية او الاجتماعية فهو يتحدث من وجهة نظر غربية ولا يهتم بأي مصائب خارج رقعة القارة العجوز أو الولايات المتّحدة، فتنبّه.
الملحق لـ محمد شعبان صوان في نهاية الكتاب أعجبني وإن كان في كلامه حدّة تشبه حدّة جميل الرويلي اتجاه الموضوع.
الترجمة ممتازة.
January 14, 2024
Political arguments for capitalism has long been associated with Adam Smith's idea of free enterprise. From Albert Hirschman's book we learn that the idea had been known, but remained in the "tacit dimension" for some time befoore the publication of The Wealth of the Nations in 1776. Before that date, Montesquieu in France and James Steuart in Scotland were suggesting that harmful human passions could be tamed by the encouragement of acquisitive pursuits. Thus while Smith aimed at economical-policital improvements, Montesquieu and Steuart were diven by well known facts and age-old ideas regarding human nature to arrive at the principle of free enterprise. This was Montesquieu's main concern formulating his well known proposal for institutional-constitutional engineering to provide checks-and-balance between the three major social-political functions of the state. Thus, considerations regarding the dynamics of "passions and interests" had preceded Smith's suggestion for the new rules and laws of economics, which subsequently developed as the dominant organizing principle of our society. Reading Hirschman's book might suggest to reconsider, beyond its origins, the current state of capitalism.
October 1, 2019
History of arguments for Capitalism.
In one of the most attractive and influential of these critiques, the stress is on the repressive and alienating feature of capitalism, on the way it inhibits the development of the “full human personality.” From the vantage point of the present essay, this accusation seems a bit unfair, for capitalism was precisely expected and supposed to repress certain human drives and proclivities and to fashion a less multifaceted, less unpredictable, and more “one-dimensional” human personality. This position, which seems so strange today, arose from extreme anguish over the clear and present dangers of a certain historical period, from concern over the destructive forces unleashed by the human passions with the only exception, so it seemed at the time, of “innocuous” avarice. In sum, capitalism was supposed to accomplish exactly what was soon to be denounced as its worst feature.
March 10, 2022
Sí el comercio y la usura eran mal vistos en la época medieval ¿Cómo es que llegamos al capitalismo?
Weber, en "La ética protestante[...]" plantea una teoría, que en el día de hoy es bastante aceptada, pero Hirschman decide ir un paso más allá para explicarnos porque el capitalismo llegó a ser el sistema económico imperante, deteniendose en la evolución de dos conceptos que parecen ser el meollo del asunto: Las Pasiones y Los Intereses
De ser términos diferentes, hasta antónimos, una secuencia de pensadores llevaron a que ambos llegaran a usarse indistintamente, llegando a ser los grandes fundamentos sobre el cual, primero, el comercio y, luego, el capitalismo descansan
Análisis lúcido y profundo, como suelen ser los libros de Hirschman, siendo una lectura que se disfruta aun siendo uno un acérrimo detractor del Capital como modelo económico... pero bueno ¿que mejor que un desencantado en general para fortalecer aun tu propia crítica?
Weber, en "La ética protestante[...]" plantea una teoría, que en el día de hoy es bastante aceptada, pero Hirschman decide ir un paso más allá para explicarnos porque el capitalismo llegó a ser el sistema económico imperante, deteniendose en la evolución de dos conceptos que parecen ser el meollo del asunto: Las Pasiones y Los Intereses
De ser términos diferentes, hasta antónimos, una secuencia de pensadores llevaron a que ambos llegaran a usarse indistintamente, llegando a ser los grandes fundamentos sobre el cual, primero, el comercio y, luego, el capitalismo descansan
Análisis lúcido y profundo, como suelen ser los libros de Hirschman, siendo una lectura que se disfruta aun siendo uno un acérrimo detractor del Capital como modelo económico... pero bueno ¿que mejor que un desencantado en general para fortalecer aun tu propia crítica?
December 4, 2017
If anyone wants to read a well-written book which summarizes the developments in economic philosophy before 20th century through a coherent narrative, this is the book for you! It was fascinating to see how economics evolved from seeing 'passions and interests' as the worst side of human beings, which should always be kept in check; to using the passion of greed and self-interest as a force which triumphs other 'harmful' passions and thus helps people to live 'good' lives. The model, most economic philosophers followed before 20th century, involved this 'fight' between different passions and interests of human beings. In this framework, capitalism was justified by showing how capitalism, harnessing the power of self-interest and greed, can dominate other harmful passions and lead human society to progress.
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