Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 German Idealism: The Thought of Modernity
- 2 European Romanticism: Ambivalent Responses to the Sense of a New Epoch
- 3 History, Tradition, and Skepticism: The Patterns of Nineteenth-Century Theology
- 4 The Young Hegelians: Philosophy as Critical Praxis
- 5 Utilitarianism, God, and Moral Obligation from Locke to Sidgwick
- 6 Capital, Class, and Empire: Nineteenth-Century Political Economy and Its Imaginary
- 7 Positivism in European Intellectual, Political, and Religious Life
- 8 European Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century
- 9 European Socialism from the 1790s to the 1890s
- 10 Conservatism: The Utility of History and the Case against Rationalist Radicalism
- 11 The Woman Question: Liberal and Socialist Critiques of the Status of Women
- 12 Darwinism and Social Darwinism
- 13 Historicism from Ranke to Nietzsche
- 14 Philology, Language, and the Constitution of Meaning and Human Communities
- 15 Decadence and the “Second Modernity”
- 16 Nihilism, Pessimism, and the Conditions of Modernity
- 17 Civilization, Culture, and Race: Anthropology in the Nineteenth Century
- 18 The Varieties of Nationalist Thought
- 19 Ideas of Empire: Civilization, Race, and Global Hierarchy
- 20 Rethinking Revolution: Radicalism at the End of the Long Nineteenth Century
- Index
6 - Capital, Class, and Empire: Nineteenth-Century Political Economy and Its Imaginary
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 August 2019
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 German Idealism: The Thought of Modernity
- 2 European Romanticism: Ambivalent Responses to the Sense of a New Epoch
- 3 History, Tradition, and Skepticism: The Patterns of Nineteenth-Century Theology
- 4 The Young Hegelians: Philosophy as Critical Praxis
- 5 Utilitarianism, God, and Moral Obligation from Locke to Sidgwick
- 6 Capital, Class, and Empire: Nineteenth-Century Political Economy and Its Imaginary
- 7 Positivism in European Intellectual, Political, and Religious Life
- 8 European Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century
- 9 European Socialism from the 1790s to the 1890s
- 10 Conservatism: The Utility of History and the Case against Rationalist Radicalism
- 11 The Woman Question: Liberal and Socialist Critiques of the Status of Women
- 12 Darwinism and Social Darwinism
- 13 Historicism from Ranke to Nietzsche
- 14 Philology, Language, and the Constitution of Meaning and Human Communities
- 15 Decadence and the “Second Modernity”
- 16 Nihilism, Pessimism, and the Conditions of Modernity
- 17 Civilization, Culture, and Race: Anthropology in the Nineteenth Century
- 18 The Varieties of Nationalist Thought
- 19 Ideas of Empire: Civilization, Race, and Global Hierarchy
- 20 Rethinking Revolution: Radicalism at the End of the Long Nineteenth Century
- Index
Summary
Even before venturing into the realm of ideas, the historian of the nineteenth century is confronted with the inevitable question of why political economy acquired so much importance during this period. Not only did economic thought gain full autonomy from philosophical and legal thought, but it also established itself as a central domain in the study of society. This was, to a large extent, due to the advent of industrial capitalism in northwestern Europe and to its subsequent spread southward. Through a good part of the century – at least until the development of Emile Durkheim’s sociology – political economy (and its critique) represented the only theory of capitalist society. Be it a “bourgeois science,” an anti-bourgeois science, or one of social mediation, it could not evade the great problem of industrial society, that of wealth distribution. “To determine the laws which regulate this distribution, is the principal problem in Political Economy,” wrote David Ricardo. He was echoed by N. W. Senior, for whom political economy was “the Science which treats of the Nature, the Production, and the Distribution of Wealth.”
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- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought , pp. 131 - 150Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019