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...

Neither Marxists and Hegelians nor most supporters of market economies believe that we can really choose an economic system. Historical laws and economic realities undermine our attempts. Explores the problem of predicting any human future and examines background views of human nature which...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Economic discourse has two interesting properties. It tends to be all‐encompassing and it tends to shape the reality which it sets out to describe. Systems of economic theory can become very powerful and those based on ideas from Adam Smith and Karl Marx are good examples. Each of these has...