Poking a Hornets’ Nest: The Debate onDemocracy in Chains☆

Gary Mongiovi

A chapter in Including a Symposium on Ludwig Lachmann, 2019, vol. 37B, pp 177-196 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: InDemocracy in Chains, Nancy MacLean draws attention to the influence that James M. Buchanan’s work has had on the political economic discourse of the past half century. Buchanan and his collaborators in the Virginia Political Economy tradition have provided intellectual firepower for efforts to delegitimize democratically sanctioned policies aimed at alleviating the dysfunctional consequences of market activity. While MacLean’s account contains some well-documented inaccuracies, her characterization of Buchanan’s agenda is broadly accurate. This chapter assesses Buchanan’s economics in light of the themes raised by MacLean. His work, we shall argue, is a modern manifestation of what Marx termed “vulgar economy,” that is, ruling-class ideology posing as science.

Keywords: Buchanan; MacLean; classical liberalism; vulgar economics; Virginia political economy tradition; democracy and capitalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... 3-41542019000037B020
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:rhetzz:s0743-41542019000037b020

DOI: 10.1108/S0743-41542019000037B020

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().