Kornai János: „From Socialism to Capitalism and Democracy. János Kornai on the trials of socialism and transition. An interview with introduction by Brian Snowdon.” World Economics, 2003, Vol. 4. No. 1. pp. 33-71.
World Economics Volume 4 • Number 1 • January-March 2003 Pride and Prejudice 1 What’s good and bad about economics Diane Coyle Economics is one of the most powerful of intellectual disciplines, applying enlightened scepticism to human society. Its analytical rigour often makes economists unpopular, but that ought to be a source of pride. Unfortunately, we are all too often our own worst enemies, as the formal study of economics has taken the scientific method to an unproductive extreme that is vanishingly rare even in the natural sciences. The most interesting research in economics now— looking at history or geography or institutions or psychology—-is steering away from this reductive blind-alley, but there is a long way to go before economics returns to its fruitful intellectual roots. Speaking in Tongues 7 Our economic vernacular Peter J. Dougherty Over the past half century, a global economic language—a vernacular—has emerged. This vernacular, like any such language, has formed the foundation of much of contemporary economic culture across nations, and has facilitated communication on economics around the world. Two books have served as particularly rich sources of this economic vernacular, Paul Samuelson’s Economics (now with William Nordhaus), originally published in 1948, and Robert Heilbroner’s The Worldly Philosophers, first appearing in 1953. Peter J. Dougherty traces the history of these two modern classics and their influence—the former on scientific understanding, the latter on critical perspective—on the millions of students who passed through economic principles courses in the generations since the post-war publication of these books. Adair Turner In this article Adair Turner explores the relative economic and social success of different variants of capitalism, and considers how societies best reconcile the objectives of economic dynamism with those of social inclusion and environmental responsibility. He also addresses the wider issue of the relationship between economics, politics and culture—the issue of whether we are right to assume that any variant of capitalism, or indeed any model of society, is a universal model. Capitalism and the End of History 15