Search results

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

John E. Elliott has been a professor of economics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles since 1956 when he graduated from Harvard University with a doctorate in economics. In that position at USC, John has distinguished himself not only as a scholar and prolific writer but also as an outstanding teacher. He has received every teaching honour which USC has within its power to bestow. Moreover, John has distinguished himself for his contribution to the well‐being of the faculty and to the advancement of its efforts to preserve and extend the concept of academic freedom. John E. Elliott was born in the year 1931 and the essays which comprise this Festschriftare written in celebration of his sixtieth birthday. The numerous awards he has received for the high quality of his teaching, for his creativity and innovation in the dissemination of knowledge, his record of books published, articles contributed to scholarly journals and book reviews are to be found in his curriculum vitae printed at the end of this work.

John E. Elliott has been a professor of economics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles since 1956 when he graduated from Harvard University with a doctorate in economics. In that position at USC, John has distinguished himself not only as a scholar and prolific writer but also as an outstanding teacher. He has received every teaching honour which USC has within its power to bestow. Moreover, John has distinguished himself for his contribution to the wellbeing of the faculty and to the advancement of its efforts to preserve and extend the concept of academic freedom. John E. Elliott was born in the year 1931 and the essays which comprise this Festschrift are written in celebration of his sixtieth birthday. The numerous awards he has received for the high quality of his teaching, for his creativity and innovation in the dissemination of knowledge, his record of books published, articles contributed to scholarly journals, and book reviews, are to be found in his curriculum vitae printed at the end of this work.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

This paper aims to highlight the role of the United Nations in the formulation and implementation of the current understanding of “population assistance” and examine some of the arguments for “population assistance” in the form of reproductive health care.

It presents the data for global population assistance and briefly compares these figures with data for other developmental sectors, recommending certain policy changes if real development is to be achieved.

During the last decade increasingly large amounts of money have been spent on limiting population growth of underdeveloped countries. Population control is seen as the corner‐stone of development and population activities. Thus, population control has become “population assistance,” and birth control has become “reproductive health services.” Population control is pursued at the expense of women's rights and to the detriment of real economic growth and social improvement.

For more than two decades, John Conway O'Brien has written on the importance of ethics for economic growth. In a recent article, he concluded that “although the illuminated may have been activated by the most altruistic of motives, their search for the good society was doomed from the start.” This paper attests the validity of his remarks.

Examines the history of the Illuminated, a secret society founded by Adam Weishaupt in Bavaria, on 1 May 1776, which aimed to overthrow civil and religious institutions with the claim that the ends justify the means. Looks at Karl Marx and the links with the Illuminated's doctrine and also compares the Illuminated's ideas with the teaching of Smith. Concludes that although the Illuminated may have been activated by the most altruistic of motives, their search for the good society was doomed from the start.

It is suggested that the approach of the social economist to social problems, if followed, would lead to The Good Society, one in which the lot of our “human resources” would be considerably ameliorated. For the social economist the goal of the economy is not private profit nor is it improvement in the fertility of the soil nor capital accumulation for their own sakes and that of their owners, but the material, moral and spiritual well‐being of homo sapiens. The social economist is concerned with the efficiency of the capitalist system relative to the broad goals of society, rather than the maximisation of private property.

The purpose of this article is to suggest a solution to the quandary from which the economist appears unable or unwilling to extricate himself. The quandary is his own production. On the one hand, the economist is jealous of his position as scientist, a disinterested pursuer of the truth, and on the other hand, he has an irresistible urge to use his knowledge as an economist for the purpose of relieving society, and, indeed, civilisation of its social ills. To suggest how social ills may be cured is to define goals to be reached. To choose goals is to make value judgements. There is no quandary where the economist as economist simply makes value judgments and still adopts the posture of the scientist. Such dualism, however, incurs the displeasure of those of a critical turn of mind. It actually brings forth censure and suggestions that value judgments should be openly made.

The main purpose of this contribution lies in the attempt to show that the future of western civilisation has been placed in jeopardy as a result of the declining influence of the Christian ethic, a system of transcendental values, and the increased acceptance of moral relativism due to the zeal and diligence of the proponents of secular humanism, naturalism, pragmatism and utilitarianism.

I. Introduction On January 1, 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), who has been described by Andrei Gromyko as a man who “has a nice smile, but he has iron teeth,” (Goldman, 1) gave an address to the people of the United States in which he informed them that the “Soviet people are dedicated to peace — that supreme value equal to the gift of life.” (Gorbachev, 1986(a),5). Gorbachev appealed to all that is good in the American people when he said: