Earlier
this year, I ran a series of ten posts which started
with a simple question – why are we so badly served with books about the
economic crisis? I bemoaned the fact that authors –
- seem
to have made up their mind up about the explanation before they started to
write
- make
little attempt to analyse previous efforts at explanation
- generally
spend their time on diagnosis
- leaving
prescriptions to the last few pages
Of
course, there are exceptions – in particular Howard Davies’ The
Financial Crisis (2010) which identified and briefly assessed no fewer than
39 different explanations for the crisis. And I have just been reading Vampire Capitalism –
fractured societies and alternative futures a book by Paul Kennedy which
appeared only a few months ago.
An academic sociologist, Kennedy earns high
points by stating in the very first sentence that he has
“stood on the shoulders of so many giants that I am dizzy”
and then proves the point by each
chapter of his book having extensive notes (often with hyperlinks) and
concluding with a bibliography of 25 pages…
More
to the point, the book covers pretty extensively a lot of subjects, such as the
ecological crisis and the future of work, which are normally ignored in such
texts. You really feel that the guy has made a real effort to track down and
summarise for us the most important texts in the field – a quite exceptional
approach….which so few others attempt. You can check for yourself since the
book can be downloaded in its
entirety here.
I
suspect that one reason for this feature is that the book is based on a much longer
textbook he did a few years back called Global
Sociology – which would perhaps explain the lightness of some of the discussion
dealing with the feasibility of “green solutions” to the ecological aspects of
the crisis. Surprisingly, there is no reference to Capitalism 3.0 (2006) by Peter
Barnes – a very fair-minded entrepreneur sensitive to the evils of unregulated
capitalism. Nor to people such Paul Hawkens….whose Natural Capitalism – the
next industrial revolution made such an impact when it came out as
far as back as 1999. Hawkens indeed has just released an intensive analysis of
100 “feasible solutions” – assessed by a credible advisory team over the past 3
years…… Drawdown
But
I didn ‘t actually mean any takedown with these remarks – because at least the man has been
courageous enough to aim high, write clearly and put his stuff out there for us
to assess…..I so much wish others would do likewise…….
In
that spirit, let me return to the effort I made earlier this year to identify,
in some ten posts, about 200 of the key books which try to explain the
economics of the modern world – you can find them dealt with from pages 35-58
of Common
Endeavour
Somewhere
I have made the comment that the best books on the subject for me are actually
not written by economists - so I thought I would test that throwaway remark and
came up with the following table which simply identifies (very subjectively) some
seminal titles which are then placed not quite in a left-right spectrum but more
in a “tonal” spectrum…..
Key Texts on the Crisis - by category of writing - and "tone"
Discipline
|
Critical
|
Moderate
|
Apologiae
|
Economics
|
Debt and Neo-Feudalism;
Michael Hudson (2012)
|
Why Globalisation Works;
Martin Wolf (2004)
Shifts and Shocks – what we’ve learned,
and still have to, from the financial crisis;
Martin Wolf (2014) – with accompanying power point presentation.
|
most
of the discipline
|
Political
economy
|
The
discipline still rediscovering itself
|
||
Political
science
|
Democracy Incorporated – managed
democracy and the spectre of inverted totalitarianism; Sheldon Wolin
(2008)
Crisis without End - the unravelling of
western prosperity: Andrew Gamble (2014)
Mammon’s
Kingdom – an essay on Britain, Now; David Marquand (2015)
|
Paul
Hirst (stakeholding)
Peter Mair
|
Few
pol scientists trespass into the economic field
|
Sociology
|
End of capitalism? Michael Mann (2013)
|
A lot
of sociologists seduced into polling work
|
The
sociological voice is still inspired by C Wright Mills – although divided
a bit by the French school
|
geography
|
A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism –
David Harvey (2005).
Injustice ;
Daniel Dorling 2014)
A Better Politics – how government can
make us happier D Dorling (2016
|
The
geographers are a bolshie lot!
|
|
Environment
|
Why
we can’t agree about Climate Change; Mike Hulme (2009)
Natural Capitalism – the next industrial
revolution; Paul Hawken (1999)
|
Although
most of this bunch have been geographers, they pride themselves on their
technocracy
|
|
Journalism
|
Post Capitalism – a guide to our Future;
Paul Mason (2015) ….
|
How
Good Can we be – ending the mercenary society Will Hutton (2015)
|
They
don’t enjoy the tenure of the academics – and therefore have to pay attention
to their mealticket
|
Management
and mant studies
|
Rebalancing Society;
Henry Mintzberg (2014)
|
Peter
Senge
Charles
Handy
Capitalism 3.0 Peter
Barnes (2006)
|
Most
mant writers are apologists – apart from the critical mant theorists
|
Religious
studies
|
Laudato-Si –
Pope Francis’ Encyclical (2015). Accessible in its
entirety here
|
Questions
of Business Life; Higginson (2002)
|
A
more ecumenical bunch!
|
My apologies to all those who may feel demeaned……but, as I hope my next post will make clear, there is a very serious point I will be trying to make……
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