The New Household Economy

Bibliographic Data

ID3764582
AuthorsWilliam James Booth (corresponding author)
Year1991
Volume85
Issue1
Pages59-75
Publication date1991-03-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Political Science Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1962878
OpenAlexW4254194366
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited23

In the revival of scholarly interest in Marx's relationship to one of the greatest of his teachers, Aristotle, a crucial aspect has been undervalued: Marx's indebtedness to ancient political economy. While Marx employed the methods and key concepts of the economic science of his day in analyzing capitalism, he embedded that explanation in a higher-order theory of the economy. This theory, derived from the Aristotelian account of the household economy, seeks to situate the economy in an overarching account of the community, its purposiveness, and the place within it of activity, time, and domination. Marx sought thereby to illuminate the historical uniqueness of capitalism and, relatedly, to show the bounded character of the economic science (including his own) appropriate to the understanding of it. Central elements of the Aristotelian critique of an economy given over to Midas-like acquisition also find their way into Marx's evaluation of capitalism, and the ideal of the ancient oikos forms one of the core parts of Marx's theory of communism as the new household economy

Capitalism · Character (mathematics · Classical economics · Communism · Economic science · Economic system · Economics · Economy · Ideal (ethics · Neoclassical economics · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Economic Theory and Institutions · Law · Political Economy and Marxism · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory

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