Comparative-Historical Social Systems and Conservatism: An Attempt at Conceptualization and Classification

By using forms of conservatism as criteria, this paper advances a novel conceptualization and typology of comparative-historical social systems. The paper attempts to do justice to the crucial complexities involved in the relations between a free-market economy, a democratic polity and a free society overall on the one hand and varieties of conservatism on the other. Such attempts are all the more indispensable in light of various simplifications and conflations committed by the conventional wisdom, especially in the USA, in this realm. One of these simplifications is the spurious (American) equation of economic conservatism or the laissez-faire economy with a free society. Another is the broader but also dubious equivalence of the admixture of economic conservatism and formal political democracy, with a free social system. It is the purpose of this article to redress these popular misconceptions. Special emphasis is placed on a peculiar social system denoted authoritarian conservatism or conservative authoritarianism in light of its increasing salience in the USA since the 1980–1990s sequel of its permanent ‘Conservative Revolution’. Given that few endeavors exist to establish a coherent taxonomy of comparative-historical social systems on the basis of these criteria, this paper contributes to filling in a gap in the literature.     

Economics as a Multi-Paradigmatic Science: the ‘Best Kept Secret’ of Irrational Choice

The article reexamines the prevailing perception of traditional economics as the science of rational choice among contemporary economists and sociologists, especially rational choice theorists. It proposes that conventional economics is not exclusively the theory of rational choice but also one of irrational choices in the economy. The article aims to contribute toward a fuller understanding and appreciation of classical and neoclassical economics, especially among sociologists, as composite rational choice-irrational choice theory and in that sense a multi- rather than single-paradigm science, thus no different from sociology and other social (and physical) sciences. This may be relevant or interesting to sociologists given that their rational choice colleagues, like economists, extol the “virtues" of conventional and modern economics as a single-paradigm, theoretically unified science around “rational choice” and criticize the “vices” of sociology as plagued by competing paradigms and theoretical disunity. The article supports many economic sociologists’ view or intuition of conventional economics as complex rational-irrational choice theory and multi-paradigm science, and disconfirms rational choice theorists’ interpretation and generalization of it as “rational choice theory” only and single-paradigm unified science.     

‘All in the extended family’: the Pandora's box of conservatism and fascism reopened

The article attempts to reanalyze the relationships between conservatism and fascism in a historical and comparative perspective. This analysis is premised on the view that to fully understand and explain conservatism requires reexamining its comparative-historical relations to fascism, and, alternatively, understanding and explaining the second presupposes taking account of the first. The thrust of the issue is whether and to what extent conservatism constitutes or develops into fascism, and, conversely, whether the latter represents or results from the former. The central argument and finding is that under certain social conditions and historical constellations conservatism eventually evolves into or functions as fascism. Alternatively, fascism universally represents and reproduces conservatism.     

The question of mathematical social theory revisited: Some methodological considerations

Methodologically, the most advanced social science discipline is considered economics, especially its neoclassical version. A number of practitioners in the other social sciences, especially sociology and political science, perceive economics as a scientific exemplar in methodological (and theoretical) terms. This methodological exemplar has been, particularly in the last decades, attempted to emulate by some of these social scientists. The outcome of this emulation, by adopting and extending its methods, of neoclassical economics in parts (but not all) of sociology, political science, and elsewhere has been rational choice theory as a general social paradigm. This paper tries to show that many misapplications of the methodology of neoclassical economics in rational choice theory have ensued from such methodological emulation. That neoclassical economics does not necessarily contain or lead to a mathematical rational choice model is the core argument of this paper. The paper fills in a gap created by the current literature’s focus on the methodological bases of mathematical rational choice theory in neoclassical economics.     

Reexamining economic sociology: Beyond rational choice reductionism

The article aims at reexamining the origins and character of economic sociology by comparison with rational choice within the history of economic and social ideas, particularly neoclassical economic and classical sociological theory. Some suggestions for a rational choice approach to economic sociology are particularly curious in that they tend to conflate the distinct characters and origins of these two disciplines throughout this history and have in turn provided an impetus for this reexamination. Modern rational choice theorists display a predilection for reducing economic (and, all) sociology into an economic approach to human behavior, with many economic sociologists evincing some degree of lenience or benevolence vis-à-vis such tendencies. Both tendencies do not seem justified in light of the different nature and origin of economic sociology and rational choice in the history of social and economic ideas. Since the current literature lacks coherent attempts at specifying the nature and historical roots of economic sociology versus those of rational choice, the article contributes toward filling in this hole.     

Collective‐unconscious apologetics of plutocracy and oligarchy: Chicago economics' ideological preferences revealed by the sociology of knowledge

The article places and analyzes the Chicago school of economics within the framework of Mannheim's sociology of knowledge or ideas that posits and documents social determinants of ideas and ideologies. This framework reveals the Chicago school as the explicit or implicit ideology and utopia of plutocracy, oligarchy and aristocracy in the sense of apologetics of these social classes and/or systems, thus being the class form of ‘apologetic economics’. Specifically, first, Chicago economics reveals itself as the collective‐unconscious apologetics of plutocracy, oligarchy and aristocracy. Second, it appears as the ‘collective‐conscious’ apologetics in this respect. In addition, it come close to the mostly covert collective‐unconscious or conscious apologetics of theocracy and fascism. The article aims to contribute to a better understanding of the social, in particular class, factors of Chicago and related schools of economics and generally of economic ideas, theories and policies by applying Mannheim's sociology of knowledge, especially its emphasis on the collective unconscious as the source of ideology.     

‘Neo-Feudalism’ in America? Conservatism in Relation to European Feudalism

This paper reconsiders American conservatism in relation to European feudalism and medievalism. The paper argues and shows that conservatism in America has typically been an American variant or proxy of European feudalism in particular and medievalism in general. Specifically, this is argued and shown for American economic and political conservatism with respect to feudalism in economy and its despotic ramifications in politics, as reciprocally related and reinforcing elements of European medievalism. The paper also identifies other interconnected elements of European medievalism in American economic and political as well as cultural conservatism. It finds that in economic-political terms, conservatism in America, irrespective of its assumed and celebrated lack of a European feudal and medievalist past, has been and continues to be a functional equivalent of feudalism and other medievalism in Europe. The paper concludes that American conservatism, including neo-conservatism, is a sort of European neo-feudalism and neo-medievalism rather than, as it claims and widely supposed, non-feudal and non-medievalist, thus questioning received views in the literature and society.     

Spencer is dead, long live Spencer: individualism, holism, and the problem of norms

The debate between the advocates of sociological individualism and those of holism has been pervasive in the development of social theory. This debate is often situated in the false problems of sociology, since it is seen as a particular form of the perennial and irresolvable dilemma between social nominalism and realism, as well as between freedom and determinism. Nevertheless, the debate is far from over within contemporary sociology and other social science, as indicated by the resurgence of individualism in rational action theory and its repudiation by holistic social theories. The aim of this paper is to identify some modern variations on this theme as well as to discern certain common tendencies of two seemingly opposite theoretical perspectives, viz. the convergence upon a normative solution to the problem of social order. This convergence is therefore denoted normative convergence between sociological individualism and holistic sociology.     

Paradigms for analysis of social institutions: A case for sociological institutionalism

This paper makes a case for sociological institutionalism, particularly its Veblenian variant or connection. This is attempted against a background of the surge of renewed interest in analyzing institutions within modern social science, especially economics and sociology. This is indicated by the emergence of the new institutional economics as the (modified) neoclassical approach to institutions and the revival of economic sociology with its conception of the institutional embeddedness of the economy, respectively. Still, many pertinent differences between economic and sociological institutionalism are overlooked or minimized in the current literature. By exploring such differences, the paper helps span a gap in the literature in which comparative analyses of economic and sociological approaches to institutions are rare.