Looking into the Seeds of Time: The Price of Modern Development, second edition

Citation

Duhs, L.A. (2000), "Looking into the Seeds of Time: The Price of Modern Development, second edition", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 27 No. 11, pp. 1132-1141. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijse.2000.27.11.1132.3

In the 1979 first edition of his book Brenner addresses the causes and consequences of economic progress and concludes that interdisciplinary analysis – not just economics – is essential in understanding the forces which may frustrate mankind’s chances for a better future. “Something is said about the waning of the entire system of ethics” (p. lviii) in an exposition that combines broad knowledge of economic history with the evolution of political philosophy. Thus there are more references to Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Marx and Spinoza than there are to prominent economists. The present 1998 edition of the book is a re‐publication which Brenner acknowledges was suggested by Warren Samuels. In Brenner’s own words the new 32 page introduction may just as well be regarded as an added Chapter 12, with little other difference between the old and new versions of the book.

For Brenner, something remains rotten in economics. In effect, his message is that there is much hidden metaphysics in orthodox economics and in the policy guidance given by economists to evolving societies. While he was critical in his first edition of the price being paid for economic progress, he now accepts that he was in fact “too optimistic” then. While the young indeed had a chance in the 1960s and 1970s “to create a new more equitable social order”, new‐found affluence merely gave rise “to trite materialism”. So much for the New Left revolution of 1968. Brenner continues to argue that the capitalist system has a dark side which distorts values, while yet readily acknowledging – like Marx – that capitalism has been technologically magnificent in producing plenty. Whereas in 1979 he – like Marx – thought that this abundance would weaken the need for “narrow materialistic self interest”, he underestimated the fact that competition had “invested egoism with almost moral quality” thus presenting competitiveness as human nature. Individualism has been mistakenly equated with egoism and made a virtue, effectively abolishing the classical distinction between legitimate and illegitimate means of acquiring wealth. Capitalism had made survival – as against virtue or the good life – the chief desideratum and competition the chief means of achieving it. In this context Brenner’s concern is that most putatively “exogenous variables” do not develop in an economic vacuum and that prevailing conceptions of teleology and human nature – and therefore of good social and economic policy – are now sadly distorted.

For Brenner, sui generis individualism is not the nature of man. He comes close (p. xxxviii) to echoing Cropsey’s acerbic but little‐known critique of welfare economics (see Duhs, 1994) when he concludes that “the hallmark of progress is the search for what is common to mankind, and the hallmark of reaction is the stressing of differences”. In effect, Brenner – like Cropsey – affirms a species conception of human nature and predicts an eventual social disaster in consequence of the contemporary determination to celebrate what differentiates individuals from each other as more important than what they have in common as members of the same human species. For him, “human progress” requires the extension of equal rights.

In reviewing Brenner’s 1979 edition, Kindleberger (1980) acknowledges some interesting points but somewhat off‐handedly dismisses it as an “odd book” written by “a Marxist, with strong overtones of Karl Polanyi’s Christian socialism”. Kindleberger objected to poor proofreading, unclear argument and to the fact that little guidance is offered as to how the system should be reformed. In respect of the 1998 edition what might be dubbed “odd” is one point of economic history and one point of philosophical interpretation. As for the economic history point, Brenner insists that there is a vicious spiral by which western economic progress is slowly grinding to a halt. Given the fanfare at present about the extended economic boom in the USA and elsewhere, and about the dizzy heights of the Dow Jones Index and its increasing appeal to the middle class, Brenner’s conviction that present arrangements undermine self‐sustaining growth is seemingly ill‐timed.

Yet Brenner is less concerned with short term economic fluctuations than with long term social trends which impact upon the economy. Declining standards of trust and honesty are thus not only moral matters but a threat to the functioning of the economic system. In this belief he is not alone and, in terms of economic philosophy, what is odd is that he simply ignores the potential allies he could have found in Sen, Schumacher, Etzioni, Cropsey, Bloom and Fukuyama and in the more general social economics and social capital literatures. Given that Brenner’s focus is on what he sees as a moral decline in an evolving capitalism, his references to the fundamental influences of Hobbes, Locke, Smith and Co. are well received, but incorporation of the contemporary literature would have added something more.

In effect, Brenner believes in absolutes in an age of relativism. His work reflects a natural teleology and a species conception of humankind. His attack is on the growing acceptance of aimless commercialism as the measure of human values. Metaphysical problems cannot be expected to have simple answers, however, and – perhaps in response to Kindleberger’s earlier complaint about lack of guidance for the future – Brenner concludes that the task of finding solutions will have to be shared by others.

Social economists will find it possible to disagree with parts of Brenner’s analysis while yet conceding the importance of the questions he highlights.