This book adds a crucial focus on morality to the growing literature on the history of capitalism by exploring social and cultural perspectives on the economic order that has dominated the modern world. Taking the study beyond narrow economic confines, it traces the entanglement between moral sentiments and capitalism, examining both moral critiques and moral justifications. Company bankruptcies, systems of taxation, wealth, and the running of stock exchanges were attacked on moral grounds, while ideas of economic justice and the humanization of capitalism loomed large over moral critiques. Many movements, from antislavery to labour campaigns, were inspired by aspirations to improve capitalism and halt the moral decay that was felt to have affected large sections of society. This book questions how moral sentiments are defined and have changed over time, and how these relate to both capitalism and anti-capitalism. Covering a range of different social movements and ethical issues, the 13 chapters present a moral history of capitalism, understood not simply as an economic system but as an order that encompasses all areas of modern life.
Table of Content
1. Introduction: Moralizing Capitalism: Agents, Discourses and Practices of Capitalism and Anti-Capitalism in the Modern Age; Stefan Berger & Alexandra Przyrembel.- Part I History of Knowledge.- 2. Teaching Capitalism. The Popularization of Economic Knowledge in Britain and Germany (1800-1850); Sandra Maß.- 3. Moralizing Wealth: German Debates about Capitalism and the Jews in the Early Twentieth Century; Alexandra Przyrembel.- 4. The Moral Foundation of Modern Capitalism: Towards a Historical Reconsideration of Max Weber’s ‘Protestant Ethic’; Thomas Sokoll.- Part II Capitalism and the Political.- 5. We only Want to pay what is fair’: Taxes as Moral Culture in Canada 1867-1917; Elsbeth Heaman.- 6. Humanizing Capitalism. The Educational Mission of the Ford Foundation in West Germany and the United States (1945-1960); Wim de Jong.- 7. ‘Corporate citizens’ at the United Nations: The 1973 GEP Hearings and the New Spirit of Multinational Business; Christian Olaf Christiansen.- Part III Ethics and Merchants.- 8. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Taming Animal Spirits by Commercial Honour? The New York Stock Exchange during the Progressive Era; Boris Gehlen.- 9. Bankruptcy and Morality in a Capitalist Market Economy. The Case of Mid-Nineteenth 19th Century France; Jürgen Finger.- Part IV Social Movements and Moral Concerns.- 10. US Catholicism and Economic Justice: 1919-1929; Giulia D’Alessio.- 11. The Discourse against ‘Shameful Profiteering’ in Greece, 1914-1925: Notions of Exploitation, Anticapitalist Morality and the Concept of Moral Economy; Nikos Potamianos.- 12. Dilemmas of Moral Markets: Conflicting Narratives in the West German Fair Trade Movement; Benjamin Möckel.- 13. Economic Boom, Workers’ Literature, and Morality in the West Germany of the 1960s and early 1970s; Sibylle Marti.
About the author
Stefan Berger is Professor of Social History and Director of the Institute for Social Movements at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. He is also Executive Chair of the Foundation History of the Ruhr, Germany, and Honorary Professor at Cardiff University, UK.Alexandra Przyrembel is Professor of Modern European History at Fern Universität in Hagen, Germany.
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