Rival Views of Market Society and Other Recent Essays [antikvár]

Preface Older folks tend to repeat themselves, but for the aging "academic scribbler" this natural bent is artificially and powerfully reinforced nowadays by Insistent demands that he embalm his past thoughts in definitive restatements, that he conveniendy sum up, before disappearing, whatever contributions to knowledge he is supposed to have made. Contemporary pressures of this sort are responsible for the four essays of Part I of the present volume. They originate in requests that I write retrospective or even confessional papers about one or another of the issues with which I once wresded. Thus the World Bank asked me in 1982 to go over the ideas in economic development I had formulated in the 1950s. Subsequently the enterprising compilers of a new dictionary of economic doctrine and theory invited me to return to concepts I had cultivated at various times, such as Interest, linkages In economic development, and exit vs. voice. In these papers I do summarize my earlier work, but most of the space is devoted to carrying the argument forward and to dealing wdth a number of new problems that have arisen. The pressures toward self-embalming are, I hope, contained thereby. The essays in Part II, on rival views of market society and on