The paper highlights the positive aspects of cross-fertilization between society and market: the market, thanks to anonymous and peer exchanges, frees individuals to satisfy their needs by strong and emotional social ties, which are often asymmetrical and not chosen. People released from the bonds of oppressive dependence are finally able to cultivate free and mature social relations. Society in turn, through cohesion and trust built through personal relationships, creates special conditions under which trade can be made at lower cost. The reconciliation between economy and society is currently pursued by civil companies, by all those companies which are able to build a corporate citizenship without destroying the civil tissue in which the company operates. This phenomenon represents the last frontier of entrepreneurial evolution in the field. The civil companies are those companies which are oriented to Common Good under the constraint of profit. For a company this means to respond to a civil responsibility, which goes far beyond corporate social responsibility, as the paper tries to show. Moving from the practice of prophetic minorities to the pure theory, trying to recompose the destructive rift between society and market born in the neoclassical economics, it can be helpful to go back to the roots of political economy, ie to the thought of Adam Smith. It is possible to demonstrate the compatibility of his two major works which seem contradictory: "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" (where an anthropological paradigm emerges based on sympathy between people and where the virtues of giving and receiving are celebrated for civil life) and '"The Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" (where it is exaggerated, both by liberistic and anti-development thinkers, the importance attributed by Smith to self interest to rule the market). Adam Smith had really understood the importance of moral sentiments as prerequisites for the proper functioning of society and of the market (this is why is the two works were written in a certain logical-chronological order), even if the complementarity between society and market does not emerge in Smith so clear as in the contemporary Italian school of Civil Economists. So in the case of Adam Smith scientific production we are not in presence of a schizophrenia: Doctor Jekyll's in the case of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Mr.Hyde in the case of The Wealth of Nations. To solve Adam Smith’s Dilemma, according to this new interpretative key, is not only important from the standpoint of the history of economic doctrines, but also from the standpoint of contemporary economic theory, which emphasizes the growing importance of relational goods in the economy and in the solution of many market’s failures.
The Strange Case of Dr.Jekill and Mr.Hyde in Economics
MONTESI, Cristina
2012
Abstract
The paper highlights the positive aspects of cross-fertilization between society and market: the market, thanks to anonymous and peer exchanges, frees individuals to satisfy their needs by strong and emotional social ties, which are often asymmetrical and not chosen. People released from the bonds of oppressive dependence are finally able to cultivate free and mature social relations. Society in turn, through cohesion and trust built through personal relationships, creates special conditions under which trade can be made at lower cost. The reconciliation between economy and society is currently pursued by civil companies, by all those companies which are able to build a corporate citizenship without destroying the civil tissue in which the company operates. This phenomenon represents the last frontier of entrepreneurial evolution in the field. The civil companies are those companies which are oriented to Common Good under the constraint of profit. For a company this means to respond to a civil responsibility, which goes far beyond corporate social responsibility, as the paper tries to show. Moving from the practice of prophetic minorities to the pure theory, trying to recompose the destructive rift between society and market born in the neoclassical economics, it can be helpful to go back to the roots of political economy, ie to the thought of Adam Smith. It is possible to demonstrate the compatibility of his two major works which seem contradictory: "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" (where an anthropological paradigm emerges based on sympathy between people and where the virtues of giving and receiving are celebrated for civil life) and '"The Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" (where it is exaggerated, both by liberistic and anti-development thinkers, the importance attributed by Smith to self interest to rule the market). Adam Smith had really understood the importance of moral sentiments as prerequisites for the proper functioning of society and of the market (this is why is the two works were written in a certain logical-chronological order), even if the complementarity between society and market does not emerge in Smith so clear as in the contemporary Italian school of Civil Economists. So in the case of Adam Smith scientific production we are not in presence of a schizophrenia: Doctor Jekyll's in the case of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Mr.Hyde in the case of The Wealth of Nations. To solve Adam Smith’s Dilemma, according to this new interpretative key, is not only important from the standpoint of the history of economic doctrines, but also from the standpoint of contemporary economic theory, which emphasizes the growing importance of relational goods in the economy and in the solution of many market’s failures.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
