Bernard Crick, In Defence of Politics (1962)

This is a stimulating meditation on politics, which Crick defines, borrowing from Aristotle, as the "master science." It is this master science because politics, on Crick's definition, means the hard work of conciliating the plural interests in a given society, a balancing act that is the prerequisite for individual freedom and the pursuit of all other worthwhile activities. Early in my reading, I wondered whether the book wasn't merely a defense of pluralism and "open access socities," which I thought had been made earlier (the Federalist Papers, especially nr. 10) and perhaps more persuasively elsewhere (Mill? Hayek? Popper? North?). As I read on, though, I began to think that Crick's argument was something else - namely, not just a defence of pluralism as a necessary evil, but a positive endorsement of the compromises, empathy, fallibilism, etc. necessary for such conciliation. These original elements came out especially when Crick drew contrasts between politics in his sense, on the one hand, and "ideologies" - whether of Communism, democracy, nationalism, technology - on the other. There were some echoes in the book of Max Weber's "Politics as a Vocation."

Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Conceptualizing Capitalism: Institutions, Evolution, Future (2015)

This book is somewhat challenging to comment on. I found many parts quite interesting, but I don't think it ranks up there - for me, at least - as a great book. Hodgson knows a lot about many things - and he comments smartly on many debates - but at times I lost sight of what he cared most about. Or why those things mattered. For example, as his title suggests, Hodgson insists that getting the definition of capitalism right is of great importance. Conceptual precision, he says, is as important as mathematical precision. I was not completely persuaded. Midway through the book, around p. 200, he finally offered his most detailed argument why definitions mattered. Hodgson makes a case that capitalism is more than just private property and markets, which have existed for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Of crucial importance are the state and law, which make property "collateralizable" - i.e. property is the usual collateral for loans, which in Hodgson's eyes are the real motor of modern growth. So capitalism is not a timeless system, but a historical, conditional one (and it may not always be with us). Hodgson also spends considerable time making the case that too many economists have remained wedded to a "physicalist" notion of property, i.e. viewing roperty as stuff. Instead, drawing on the philosopher John Searle's ideas about collective intentionality and institutional facts, Hodgson wants us to reconceptualize property as an institutional or social fact - something we together believe in and, hence, make real. I think these are his main claims. To be honest, I stopped reading about halfway through. I found myself agreeing with his intellectual affiliations (institutional economics, evolutionary economics) and admiring his relentlessly independent judgment.