The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought

"The Mind and the Market" is certainly a rare bird: a 400-page tract of intellectual history that manages to be lucid and fascinating, informative and persuasive. It is not a historical chronicle per se; instead it is a chronological sampling of biographical profiles of major and minor thinkers and how they viewed, with admiration and mistrust, capitalism and the "free market." Muller examines the careers and thoughts of thinkers from the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries (from Adam Smith to Karl Marx), as well as more recent writers (such as George Lukacs and Friedrich Hayek) and lesser known intellectuals (Hans Freyer and Werner Sombart). An intriguing subplot of sorts that runs through these chapters is the societal and academic view of the role of Jewish populations in the development of the market; such views, even among the best thinkers (with few exceptions), tended to be harsh and simplistic. Muller's book does not in any way pretend to be comprehensive--he admits in the introduction that the authors under discussion "are drawn disproportionately from German-speaking Europe"--but this tighter focus allows for a better, more coherent narrative. "The Mind and the Market" is at its best when it sticks to intellectual history; when Muller turns to economic history, however, he occasionally falters (or, more accurately, his discussion is nakedly incomplete). In his largely unimpeachable comments on Marx's myopia, for example, he counters that capitalist development in the late nineteenth century lead to better working and living conditions in England, as well as "improved standards of health and safety in one industry after another." Such a description of the standard of living is true, but "capitalist development" is only half the story and even that story applies to only to the island and not the empire. The British Isles also benefited from colonialism: unprecedented wealth entered the country at the same time that significant chunks of its labor supply shipped overseas to jobs in civil service and the military--often never to return (60,000 died in the Crimean War alone). Similarly, Muller notes correctly that Hayek's economic theories have gained much prominence during the last three decades, but his arguments for their exoneration is a bit one-sided. He notes the deregulation and tax reduction in the United States during the 1980s but fails to admit the un-Hayek escalation in government spending (at both the federal and state levels) and in budget deficits. Fortunately for the reader, however, such details, which comprise only small portions of the book, are beyond its scope and in no way compromise the integrity of Muller's discussion of these great thinkers. Taken as a whole, "The Mind and Market" amply displays the love-hate relationship between philosophers and capitalism and how that relationship has evolved during the last two centuries.

This is not a book I would have read six months ago since I am typically not very interested in economics or political theory. But a required class in modern political economy helped change my outlook and introduced me to what thinkers such as Adam Smith actually said, which is quite different from what libertarians claim today. Muller's book fed my new found interest and then some. Muller examines how some of western civilization's greatest minds have thought about capitalism and the market. He includes thinkers that are both traditionally viewed as economists (Smith, Hayek, Schumpeter) and others not usually identified with economics (Burke, Voltaire, and Arnold). Each chapter provides an excellant summary of these thinkers and can be read alone or out of order if one wishes. One has to admire Muller for his objectivity, he studies the individuals according to their own terms and doesn't seek to judge them. Every theorist has identifiable faults and Muller points these out without bias. My personal favorite chapters were those on Smith, Hayek and Matthew Arnold.My only (minor) criticism is that I thought Muller could have dealt with Keynes in more detail. I feel he short-changed the man who in many ways defined much of the mid-20th century. I also thought a chapter on Amartya Sen might have been interesting, but it makes since to pick those theorists who are dead since their work can't develop any futher.

THE MIND AND THE MARKET is a compulsively readable history of economic thought which deserves to be a best-seller. I am not an economist or a political philosopher but rather a writer about the arts and culture, and I am devouring this book. The chapters on Hegel, Marx, and Matthew Arnold are each alone worth the price of admission. Muller carries his erudition lightly, and his prose has the calm, effortless, sparkling lucidity of a great teacher lecturing in his prime.

Capitalism is the world's most powerful idea about political, economic and moral relationships between people, enterprises and the state. It has brought immense opulence to hundreds of millions of people and hope for economic liberation to hundreds of millions more. But capitalism is not just a way of doing business. No culture nor any state can harness capitalism with a management school curriculum. Capitalism is a complex tapestry of economic arrangements, governmental obligations, cultural traditions, personal behavioral norms, concepts for production enterprises, methods of management, public acceptance of investment, encourage of competition, religious and ethnic tolerance and ideas of personal property. It is a historical fact that secular states with individual economic liberty and free markets harvest the most from capitalism. Capitalism is not just economics.Capitalism, as a global culture that defines our modern civilization, is therefore too important to be left to the economists. Jerry Z. Muller, a historian, has given us a book which in its sweep and breadth is up to the task of giving us a deeply thoughtful and insightful analysis of the evolution of capitalism's political, economic, social, ethical and psychological threads from early European thinking through the big intellectual ideas of the late Twentieth Century. He tells the story of the idea of the market, as it is formed and transformed by the great socio-politico-economic intellectuals - Voltaire, Adam Smith, Burke, Hegel, Marx, Simmell, Schumpeter, Keynes, Marcuse, Hayek, and others. As a historian, Muller interprets each man in the context of his time and culture. Muller's analysis is even handed, one of the great virtues of the book. There are thousands of political economy books, each with its own agenda if not unground axe. For me, The Mind and the Market is a level-headed guide through that thicket of thought. Muller coolly lays out the case for each ideology and clinically assesses its successes and failures, giving the devil his due, even if that devil is Marx, who while foisting the evil idea of collectivism upon the world did have empathy and voice for the terrible treatment of workers under early capitalism. Muller's trip through the minds of the great thinkers gives us the insights we need to understand how today?s manic anti-competition forces diminish our personal wealth and how governments with moral agendas weaken capitalism.Even while Muller brings us tidal historical and economic insights, he also salts this book with one liners and anecdotes that illustrate the anatomy of capitalism. Here are a couple I liked.- "Cultures that favor equality in poverty over greater but unequally distributed affluence tend to be less market oriented." Muller- From Schumpeter: "The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for the queen but in bringing them within reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of eff

It isn't often that I find myself reading an entire book, or taking notes on every page, but that's how intriguing I found Jerry Muller's easy-to-read and profound new book. I am an admirer of his previous work, Adam Smith in His Time and Ours, which I cited several times in my own history, "The Making of Modern Economics." But this book outperforms all previous efforts. It is essentially an historical commentary on the long-standing debate over the cultural effects of capitalism, a debate between the advocates (Voltaire, Adam Smith, Burke, Hegel, Weber, Schumpeter, and Hayek) and the critics (Rousseau, Marx, Arnold, Sombart, Lukacs, Keynes, and Marcuse). I learned a great deal, especially Voltaire's fraudulent business practices, Burke's long fight against the East India Company, Hegel's surprising defense of individualism and the market, the brilliant insights of Georg Simmel, Schumpeter's subtle subterfuge of intellectuals, and Muller's extensive coverage of anti-semitism and capitalism. (One surprising omission is Veblen, whose cultural criticisms of capitalism are well-known, but frankly, it is refreshing to read a book without a reference to the conspicuous Veblen). I won't give away author's perspective on this never-ending debate, but one can only be awe-struck by Muller's achievement.