The Mind and the Market - Muller
I wrote this a few months ago
I adore the cover for this book. One of the main reasons I picked it up. If you put an old painting and a great title on the cover, I am buying it.
I have always loved economic history, specifically macroeconomic history. Muller takes the approach of telling the story of capitalism through people rather than stories. He uses economists you'd expect - Smith, Marx, Keynes, etc., but also Voltaire, Burke, and Hegel. The central argument Muller is making is that capitalism has been the defining preoccupation of modern life, while most historians treat it as peripheral. This is a chronological text, and often dry, but it builds up to the argument he is making.
Voltaire saw commerce as a civilizing force compared to its contemporary opposite, religious zealotry. It allowed people to engage in commerce across faiths and opposite views, all working to a common individual goal. His contemporary, Justus Möser, took the opposite view. He watched capitalism erode the local customs that gave Germany its identity. Rather than giving you the description of Adam Smith you've heard, Muller takes to describing his genuine concern with power imbalances. He was no free market absolutist like you hear so often. Burke was similar to Möser; he insisted that we must not rationalize out the core traditions while in search of the perfect economy. I tend to agree with this; it is easy to rationalize away things that do not hold meaning that is obvious. We are doing this with the Church now.
Marx coined the term "capitalism" and focused on the alienation of workers in a specialized world. Workers become simply part of the machine; there is a reason his work still holds so much weight. Matthew Arnold was similar to Burke in realizing that market influences did not belong everywhere, in the church, education, and self-teaching. Weber and Simmel both examine how capitalism reshapes the psyche of humans: Weber using the Protestant ethic and rationalizing of life, and Simmel through observation that focusing on ends makes you lose sight of things that matter to you. I question if this was different before capitalism? One would focus on survival much more. Keynes argued that capitalism's instability required active management and that leaving markets to themselves would cause periodic catastrophe. We have seen that the past crashes were due to markets being left alone. We have now taken the stance that markets are best left alone and only interact with them when they need help after one of these periodic crashes. Hayek discusses. Hayek is Hayek.
The whole book discusses the role of Jews in the financial system, focusing on everyone converging as Jews as their target throughout history. The discussion of usury I found very interesting.
What came of this book for me was a history of the critiques and support of capitalism through individuals. Muller does not shy away from asserting its benefits, often proposing a critique and giving it no room to breathe in the same way his support does. I have many topics to write about, specifically from this book: Why do innovations become obligations, why does the market get rid of the institutions that gave rise to it, and why do people not appreciate the benefits of capitalism?