Showing 1 - 10 of 23
Civilisation is not possible unless aggression can be brought under control. It is armed aggression – aggression by governments and by groups that hope to become governments – that most strongly threatens human survival. About this, Freud’s theorizing most strongly captures the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014805038
Communication systems are structured by economic forces which use them to optimise sales, and politicians who increasingly live by slogans and repeated sound bites. Both want people to act without much reflection, and may threaten to turn human beings into imitiations of the computers they use....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014805041
Perhaps the greatest peril to civilisation is the fragmentation of knowledge. Science often lends itself to easy application to technology and our economic systems are the result of applying this knowledge to our resources. But our knowledge of how societies work lags significantly, and the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014805087
The fragmentation of knowledge poses serious threats to a survival when scientific and technological know‐how constantly outrun understanding of societies and individuals. A significant problem associated with this state of affairs is the unquestioned separation of facts and values. This paper...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014805112
The influence of ideas is a central but puzzling problem in the social sciences. Parsons insisted that ideas play a central role in social continuity as well as in social change. Basic ideas that organise experience become embedded in the public mind and structure the ways in which issues are...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014805204
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce the “Radical economics” issue in International Journal of Social Economics . Design/methodology/approach – “Radical economics” has two basic meanings. One employs the basic sense of “radical”, whatever goes to the roots of the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014805586
Purpose – It is difficult to get an adequate account of human needs but there are known needs which, for hundreds of millions of people, are not met. Can the present economic system meet them? Can any economic system meet them? Is simple economic growth the answer? The purpose of this paper is...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014805651
Socialism is in trouble, but some serious problems which provoked socialist theory remain. These do not have to do so much with the class war – which is remediable – as with the difficulties of establishing and maintaining an effective “social self” in an economic system which does not...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014805859
Hegelian ideas are used to explain the success of Lenin. Hegel′s account of the World Historical Individual may be especially relevant at this time because the dialectic between decentralised grassroots politics and the need for strong central authority not only figured in the rise of Napoleon...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014805887
Few people believe that Marxists gave adequate reasons for the predicted collapse of capitalism. But can market economies and liberal democracies survive indefinitely? Their survival depends on the solution to at least two problems. Continued expansion must lead to depleted environments and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014805899