Workshop Information

(Wenzel Hablik, 1921. Große bunte utopische Bauten)

Economic Pluralism: Past and Present

Date: September 2-3, 2022 

Place: McMaster University (Hamilton, ON), The Great Hall (The Buttery); Zoom participation will be available 

Keynote lectures by Thomas Christiano (University of Arizona) and Rahel Jaeggi (HU Berlin)

Zoom participation is available via this link: https://mcmaster.zoom.us/j/96881069643 

A detailed schedule can be found here

For more information please contact Ayomide Ajimoko (ajimokae@mcmaster.ca

Featured Keynotes

Rahel Jaeggi, Humbodt University Berlin

Participants + Abstracts

Thimo Heisenberg, Bryn Mawr College

This paper makes the proposal that Hegel’s economic vision is best understood as anticipating a 20th century position usually known as ‘market socialism’ (and advanced e.g. by David Miller or John Roemer). On such a view, traditional socialist values (such as ‘solidarity’ or ‘community’) are thought to be  in principle compatible with market practices and with the competition they engender. Indeed, market socialist usually believe that these values can in practice even be realized within the market sphere. Hegel, this paper argues, holds this dual set of views and spells out his own unique version of them – a version that, indeed, fares well against some contemporary objections that market socialism had to face. Hegel, hence, emerges as one of the first ‘market socialists’ and as a potential source of inspiration for the contemporary debate surrounding this position. 

Lisa Herzog, University of Groningen 

This paper proposes a rereading Tawney’s The Acquisitive Society as a piece of economic philosophy that contains important inspirations for today’s questions about markets, workplace democracy, and the redesign of economic institutions given planetary boundaries. Central to Tawney’s account is his notion of “social functions,” towards which economic activity should be oriented, away from an unconditional understanding of property rights, and especially “functionless property.” A “functional society” would create opportunities for meaningful work and social recognition for workers. To organize work around the fulfilment of social functions, Tawney recommends governance structures in which both workers and other stakeholders, e.g., patients or customers, have a voice, and in which transparency and public oversight are key. However, Tawney’s account also requires updates, with regard to at least two sets of criticisms that have been raised against him: concerning the role of markets, and concerning questions about the democratic determination of “social functions” in a pluralistic society. Such updates, however, are possible, and turn Tawney into an interesting interlocutor for those trying to rethink the foundations of the current economic system in the face of the current ecological and social crises.

Fernando Lennertz, McMaster University

Fernando Lennertz will analyze which changes are needed in the way business firms typically operate for a democracy to be able to give equal consideration to the interests of each of its citizens and uphold the social values that would follow from this process. In particular, he will propose an alternative model based on the Mondragon experiment and its worker cooperatives, one that can give firms different social purposes, workplace democracy and root them in their relevant communities. This model can be embraced by opposite sides of the political spectrum, since it is a bottom-up approach for sociopolitical change via competition in the market for the benefit of workers, consumers, communities and the environment, without necessarily involving the state.

John Stuart Mill, socialism, and pluralist economies

Helen McCabe, Univeristy of Nottingham 

Most work on Mill focuses on his account of civil or political liberties. But as Bruce Baum (2006) rightly argues, Mill’s commitment to “the free development of individuality” applied in the economic sphere. Mill was a socialist (McCabe, 2021), and as part of his decentralised, “liberal”, socialism, he endorsed a “pluralist” economy which combined consumer- and producer-cooperatives (run as autonomous worker-democracies) with some state provision (where possible, preferably from local government). This “utopia” reveals a road untravelled both by socialism and by liberalism, but which seeks to achieve normative principles dear to both – liberty, equality, security, fraternity, and progress – and which is worth serious consideration in modern times. 

Michael Nance, University of Maryland – Baltimore County

This talk provides an overview of a much-neglected economic proposal: Fichte’s Closed Commercial State (1800). Fichte’s political economy is a re-interpretation of the classical social contract in terms of what we would now call socialist economic planning. In this and other respects, his view can be fruitfully understood as a bridge between 18th century liberalism and 19th century socialism. I focus on Fichte’s view of property rights, his republican theory of freedom, and his theory of distributive justice as it relates to his political economy. The paper reconstructs Fichte’s argument and evaluates its contemporary significance more than 200 years after the publication of Fichte’s text.

Lydia Patton, Virginia Tech

This talk will analyze the extent to which neo-Kantian New Socialism can be viewed as a viable third way between traditional Marxist thought and capitalism. The perceived failures of the Russian revolution led to reconsideration of fundamental economic and ethical positions in early 20th-century Germany, and Kant was used as a key resource in this re-thinking. In this context, a seminal debate occurred between Rosa Luxemburg and Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein had defended a socialism that cooperated with the existing state, engaging in reforms that promote workers’ interests. Luxemburg responded with a blistering critique in her Social Reform or Revolution?, countering Bernstein’s reformism with a defense of wholesale revolution. One aspect of Bernstein’s position that deserves more attention is his relationship with Kantian political theory. Bernstein’s positions were influenced materially by his engagement with the Marburg School of neo-Kantianism, especially with Friedrich Albert Lange, Hermann Cohen, Karl Vörlander, and Kurt Eisner. 

Stefan Sciaraffa, McMaster University

Stefan Sciaraffa examines the relation between liberal neutrality and institutionalized forms of solidarity. He argues that a storied branch of political theory (beginning with Rousseau and running through Hegel, Marx, and Rawls) defends and develops the thesis that successful homo socialis institutional design is a necessary precondition of any political community’s realization of the values of freedom and equality. He further argues that because the liberal neutrality constraint is grounded in and subordinate to the values of freedom and equality, this constraint does not debar the homo socialis institutional design project. The talk thus develops a concept of solidaristic institutional design that opposes Samuel Bowles’ influential view that the Pareto-efficiency objective and liberal-neutrality constraint are in conflict.

Igor Shoikhedbrod, St. Francis Xavier University

Karl Marx had a nuanced understanding of the relationship between production and distribution, which also informed his account of capitalist and post-capitalist political-economic arrangements. On the theoretical plane, Marx took issue with political economists like John Stuart Mill, who, in his view, separated production and distribution in arbitrary ways. Politically, Marx was also concerned with the one-sided fixation among some socialists on the sphere of distribution. In this talk, I will briefly outline Marx’s understanding of the production-distribution relationship and show its continued relevance for ongoing debates in political theory (in the work of G.A. Cohen, Elizabeth Anderson, and John Roemer) and in political economy (in the work of Thomas Piketty, Branko Milanovic, and Wolfgang Streeck). I will close by reaffirming the importance of a proper understanding of the production-distribution relationship for meaningful political-economic reform.    

Johannes Steizinger, McMaster University

Johannes Steizinger examines Georg Simmel’s critical discussion of individualism and socialism as opposing principles of modern life, which is, according to Simmel, shaped by the forces of money economy. He argues that Simmel advances a highly relevant but often neglected perspective on economic arrangements by critically discussing the eudemonistic consequences of both individualist and socialist cultures. Searching for a reconciliation of what he sees as opposing human desires, Simmel develops a pluralistic economic vision. In his Sociology (1908), he argues that socialist arrangements have so far been successful in small, local groups within a market economy. Reading Simmel’s positive evaluation of the Familistere de Guise as an endorsement of a plural economic system in which the individualist and socialist tendencies of the money economy are combined, Steizinger explores the systematic potentials of this proposal.

Elisabeth Widmer, University of Oslo

This paper argues that the ‘scientific dispute’ between Hermann Cohen and Rudolf Stammler is symptomatic of a philosophical movement of left-wing Kant interpretations at the turn of the 20th century. By outlining influential predecessors that shaped Cohen’s and Stammler’s thinking, I show that their Kantian justifications of socialism differ fundamentally regarding their conception of methodology, history, and the political implications that follow from their practical philosophies. Against scholars who suggest that the Marburg school’s view on socialism was a coherent school of thought, I introduce the concept of ‘left-Kantianism’ as an open term that includes a wide variety of novel socialist approaches to Kant at the time.