Research Catalog

Third ways : how Bulgarian greens, Swedish housewives, and beer-swilling Englishmen created family-centered economies-- and why they disappeared

Title
Third ways : how Bulgarian greens, Swedish housewives, and beer-swilling Englishmen created family-centered economies-- and why they disappeared / Allan C. Carlson.
Author
Carlson, Allan C.
Publication
Wilmington, Del. : ISI Books, [2007], ©2007.

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TextRequest in advance HM548 .C37 2007gOff-site

Details

Description
xiii, 225 pages; 23 cm.
Summary
"Freewheeling capitalism or collectivist communism: when it came to political-economic systems, did the twentieth century present any other choice? Does our century? In Third Ways, social historian Allan Carlson tells the story of how different thinkers from Bulgaria to Great Britain created economic systems during the twentieth century that were by intent neither capitalist nor communist. Unlike fascists, these seekers were committed to democracy and pluralism. Unlike liberal capitalists, they refused to treat human labor and relationships as commodities like any other. And unlike communists, they strongly defended private property and the dignity of persons and families. Instead, the builders of these alternative economic systems wanted to protect and renew the "natural" communities of family, village, neighborhood, and parish. They treasured rural culture and family farming and defended traditional sex roles and vital home economies." "Carlson's book takes a fresh look at distributism, the controversial economic project of Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton which focused on broad property ownership and small-scale production; recovers the forgotten thought of Alexander Chayanov, a Russian economist who put forth a theory of "the natural family economy"; discusses the remarkable "third way" policies of peasant-led governments in post-World War I Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania; recounts the dramatic and largely unknown effort by Swedish housewives to defend their homes against radical feminism; relates the iconoclastic ideas of economic historian Karl Polanyi, including his concepts of "the economy without markets" and "the great transformation"; and praises the efforts by European Christian Democrats to build a moral economy on the concept of homo religious - "religious man."" "Finally, Carlson's work explains why these efforts - at times rich in hope and prospects ultimately failed, often with tragic results. The tale inspires wistful regret over lost opportunities that, if seized, might have spared tens of millions of lives and forestalled or avoided the blights of fascism, Stalinism, socialism, and the advent of the servile state. And yet the book closes with hope, enunciating a set of principles that could be used today for invigorating a "family way" economy compatible with an authentic, healthy, and humane culture of enterprise."--BOOK JACKET.
Series Statement
Culture of enterprise series
Uniform Title
Culture of enterprise series.
Subjects
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (p. [187]-210) and index.
Contents
1. "Chesterbelloc" And the Fairy Tale of Distributism -- 2. The Wages of Kin: Building a Secular Family-Wage Regime -- 3. Alexander Chayanov and the Theory of Peasant Utopia -- 4. Green Rising: The Promise and Tragedy of Peasant Rule in Eastern Europe -- 5. Last March of the Swedish Socialist Housewives -- 6. Karl Polanyi and the "Economy Without Markets -- 7. Seeking a Moral Economy: The Christian Democratic Moment -- Conclusion: Dreams, Realities, Illusions.
ISBN
  • 1933859407
  • 9781933859408
LCCN
2007933850
OCLC
  • ocn171113257
  • 171113257
  • SCSB-5380775
Owning Institutions
Columbia University Libraries