I review Alberto Mingardi’s Classical Liberalism and the Industrial Working Class, which looks at the thought of a nineteenth century reputed socialist.
Hodgskin saw government interference, not capitalist exploitation, as the force standing between workers and their fair share of income.
Thanks for the interesting review. Thomas Hodgskin was indeed an articulate skeptic of government and its capture by capitalists. A quick review of his wiki quotes (https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Hodgskin ) amply demonstrates the increasing relevance of his thought and his critique of the relationship between taxes, capital, and political power. Nevertheless, he does not address the issue of why democratic consensus forms of government such ad those of Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark, and Norway outperform the USA in among many other things average wages. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage
Do you know someone who has been able to explain differences among constitutional democracies?
You assume we can compare the constitutional democracies of the U.S. and other countries. We don’t have the analytical tools to do it, however. Even if we were able to agree which countries are constitutional democracies, there would be too many dimensions to differentiate them. We may think that size and scope matter more than anything else but that would be only about the state as an organization responsible for providing a limited number of goods and services and fail to explain differences in those countries’ societies.
The relevant comparison of constitutional democracies is about how different ways of structuring both the government and the political competition (X) may affect the society in general (Y), and the economy in particular. So far we have failed to agree on relevant descriptions of both X and Y, and more importantly on how they may relate. Most statements asserting that an X* is an important determinant of some Y* are based on unreliable and irrelevant pieces of evidence.
Indeed, it’s important to know how X and Y are related. Take the case of Chile today. In early 2021, there will be an election to establish a Constitutional Assembly with the mandate to design a Constitution that later will have to be approved in a referendum. At least two main factions are competing for the Assembly’s seats. The Radicals propose that the new Constitution should empower the state well beyond what reasonable people would consider a “constitutional democracy” and constrain post-Constitution political competition only to parties committed to making “good”, “active” use of the new powers. The Conservatives propose limited reforms to the existing Constitution (designed by a Commission established by Pinochet but today includes many post-1990 reforms). Most of the ongoing debate is about different versions of the Radicals’ proposal. The Radicals are searching for a Constitution that changes society, including the economy. They want rules that make legal only the outcomes they like. Some conservatives laugh at them because it’s clear that they will never agree on the preferred outcomes, but I’m worried because then they will attempt to put stricter rules to constrain political competition.
I hope that the people of Chile are not so shortsighted as that. It would be tragic if they allowed this opportunity to be hijacked by those with policy agendas rather than looking for improving processes of achieving policy consensus, protecting human rights by limiting government powers, and promoting peace, prosperity, and personal autonomy. I hope that they will have learned from South American history and lead humanity forward with a humble and competent new constitution.
To answer your first question, the great Arendt Lijphart’s book Patterns of Democracy is the best single source on comparative constitutional studies that I know of. Robert A. Dahl is the best writer that I know of on the weaknesses of the USA constitution. I recommend his How Democratic is the American Constitution? Also particularly relevant now is F.H. Buckley’s excellent Once and Future KinG: The Rise of Crown Government in America laying out a highly readable and well-reasoned evaluation finding parliamentary systems superior to presidential systems.
Thanks for the references. They are good complements to Dennis Mueller’s “Constitutional Democracy” (we can also take advantage of the last edition of Dennis “Public Choice”).
I’m sorry. The question with which I started my comment was not complete. It should have been: Do you know someone who has been able to explain differences among constitutional democracies and their social and economic consequences?
Political and public choice scientists have tried to explain differences among constitutional democracies (the Xs in my first comment) but they have failed to relate them to social and economic consequences (the Ys). If you read the three editions of Mueller’s Public Choice (and his first paper, a survey of Public Choice published in JEL 1979) you will see how little we have advanced in relating the Xs and the Ys.
Thanks for the recommendations. I just ordered both books.
Goes at least back to the Black Death. In 1349, England enacted the Statute of Laborers to fix wages and stop the spiraling labor costs and labor migration due to the shortage after the pandemic.
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(1350) The next year the statute [of Laborers] is made more elaborate, and specifies, for common laborers, one penny a day; for mowers, carpenters, masons, tilers, and thatchers, three pence, and so on. It is curious that the relative scale is much the same as to-day: masons a little more than tilers, tilers a little more than carpenters; though unskilled labor was paid less in proportion. The same statute attempts to protect the laborer by providing that victuals shall be sold only at reasonable prices, which were apparently fixed by the mayor.
Here, therefore, we have the much-discussed Standard Wage fixed by law, but in the interest of the employer; not a “living wage” fixed in the interest of the employee, as modem thought requires. The same statute makes it unlawful to give to able-bodied beggars, which is of a piece with the compulsory labor of the able-bodied. Now this first Statute of Laborers, which led to centuries of English law unjust to the laborers, it is interesting to note, was possibly never a valid law, for it was never agreed to by the House of Commons. However that may be, the confirming statute of 1364 was duly enacted by Parliament, and this was not in terms repealed until the year 1869, although labor leaders claim it to have been repealed by general words in the 5th Elizabeth.
Thorold Rogers tells us that those, after all, were the happy days of the laborer when masons got four pence a day, and the Black Prince, the head of the army, only got twenty shillings sixty times as much.”
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“(1388) The Statute of Richard II restricts laborers to their hundred and makes it compulsory for them to follow the same trade as their father after the age of twelve. The wages of both industrial and agricultural laborers are again fixed — shepherds, ten shillings a year; ploughmen, seven; women laborers, six shillings, and so on. Servants are permitted to carry bows and arrows, but not swords, and they may not play tennis or foot-ball. And here is the historical origin of the important custom of exacting recommendations: servants leaving employment are required to carry a testimonial, and none are to receive servants without such letter — the original of the blacklist.”
–Popular Law-making: A Study of the Origin, History, and Present Tendencies of Law-making by Statute, Frederic Jesup Stimson (1910)
I once took a look and it does seem that the population had recovered enough by the time of Elizabeth I (late 16th century) for the routine capping of wages and administration of food necessities by mayors to no longer be necessary with wage growth essentially remaining stagnant for the next 300 years.
In a way, you could say the greatest enemy of labour is…labour. Everything is supply and demand. Increase supply of laborers…
You could say that increased supply of laborers will increase demand, but its possible that demand for the labor of low skilled workers becomes saturated in modern markets, so if ups can’t change the low skill into high skill its possible that supply increases will not cause demand increases. Kind of like what happened to horse labor.
You have a very good point. To each of us, often others look like our greatest competitors in earning an income (and perhaps in meeting most of our demands for goods and services).
But there is a counterpoint: to each of us, often others look like our greatest fellows in generating income (and perhaps in satisfying most of our demands for goods and services).
Sometimes we know that we have to punish others for hurting us. Sometimes we know that we have to thank some others for cooperating with us.