Speaker
Description
The “prudent man” characterises the Smithian model of capitalism. An economic system characterised by the ‘prudent’ behaviour of the entrepreneur, in which the risk assessment of economic enterprise seems to be subordinated to social rules. Smith is well aware that “human
nature” is complex and, because of the contradictory “passions” that determine it, is not given in its characters once and for all. He is also well aware of its plasticity, which makes variations in behaviour possible depending on circumstances and the social environment. However, as an Enlightenment man, he is convinced that man (as a social animal) always ends up adopting a rational attitude that incorporates socially and ethically acceptable goals. From his oeuvre as a whole, one can deduce Smith's conviction that economic activity has no internal mechanisms of self-regulation, if one disregards the level of profit that can be acquired. Therefore, the rules of the game depend on a difficult (but possible) balance between economic and socially responsible action.
The second part of the story is told by Marx (whom we will not consider here) and by M. Weber and Sombart, who seem to take up, through their socio-economic analysis, the questions that Smith poses, above all, in the Theory of Moral Sentiments. How is it that “men brought up in a hard school of life”, with “strictly bourgeois views and principles”, attentive to the value of life and supported by strict ethical and religious principles, have produced a rapacious economic system, characterised exclusively by the pursuit of “unscrupulous gain and unrestrained by any inner rules”. In 1913, Sombart assumes that in Fruhkapitalismus, the economic system is centred on a “prudent” type of
entrepreneur, attentive to the needs of workers and consumers. Once again, the problem becomes one of explaining how we got from that capitalism to the current predatory economic system. According to Sombart and Weber, in the transitional phase, when the “spirit of capitalism” had not yet fully established itself, it was tied to the ethical and religious assumptions of the old socio-economic system. When, fully developed, it got rid of “the old supports”, it was only oriented by
the pursuit of profit (manifesting a priority of the economy over society), endangering the social balance and that of the natural environment.
| Organization | University of Salento |
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