LIBRI DI LUCA FIORITO

This note presents an unpublished 1939 address given by the American sociologist and population specialist Norman Edwin Himes on “Eugenics and Democracy: A Call to Action. Himes’s discussion of eugenics and democracy has a two-fold relevance. First, it provides further evidence that among population studies specialists a generalized commitment to eugenics persisted well beyond the era of the so-called Progressive Era and continued throughout the 1930s. Second, Himes’s approach reveals an attempt to reformulate a eugenic agenda along “liberal” lines, which was intended to distance him from the coercive and racialist approach of his progressive predecessors. Yet, it will be shown, even though Himes seemed to temper the extremism of the earlier movement with sociological and voluntaristic language, there was little actual change in the ultimate goals of his agenda regardless of the apparent switch to democratic eugenics.

Sidney Armor Reeve, professional engineer and amateur historian, economist, and sociologist, writing during what has been described as the Progressive Era, at-tacked the very foundations of the existing economic and social orders. He explic-itly criticized the dominant commercialism of the capitalist society as being a can-cer, a major cause of inequality and unemployment, offering instead a program of reform that, while some reviewers characterized it as consistent with the program of the socialists, presented something of an alternative vision, one recognizing the primacy of the Ultimate Consumer. His remedy, favoring as it did the central con-trol of the economy, shared at least commonalities with the reforms advocated by the socialist writers of the period, even as he himself rejected the label, unequivo-cally stressing points of fundamental disagreement.

Edwin Chamberlin’s The Theory of Monopolistic competition is often described as containing important traces of institutionalist influence. This is also confirmed by Chamberlin himself who, repeatedly, referred to the work of Veblen, and John Maurice Clark among his inspirational sources. The aim of this paper is to analyse the institutionalist reaction to the publication of the Theory of Monopolistic Competition. What will be argued is that the institutionalist response to Chamberlin was a mixed one, and involved some substantial criticisms of his analysis of market structures both on methodological and theoretical grounds. The paper is organized as follows. The first section presents a sketch of the main theoretical implications contained in The Theory of Monopolistic Competition. The second section analyses the general aspects of the institutionalist reaction to Chamberlin. The third and fourth sections deal with the more theoretical aspects of the institutionalist criticism of Chamberlin. The final section presents a conclusion.

Il primo studio sistematico sulla «Biblioteca dell’economista», una collana editoriale che, con i suoi 71 tomi contenenti più di 150 classici della scienza economica, divenne uno strumento unico di aggiornamento e di divulgazione delle idee economiche nel panorama internazionale. Il volume offre inoltre studi sulle traduzioni di manuali stranieri non incluse nella «Biblioteca», sull’apertura internazionale della manualistica italiana e sulla sua diffusione e ricezione all’estero.

This volume contains the papers presented at the VIII AISPE conference dealing with the relationship between economic theory and economic institutions in historical perspective. The organizing Committee felt this was an area of the history of economics that contained numerous opportunities for new and interesting research in the following areas: the influence of economic ideas or of single economists upon the creation and the governance of specific institutions; the way the actual working and organization of institutions may have influenced the growth of economic theory and knowledge; the economic theory of institutions in historical perspective.