Hellerian Capitalism I: Characteristics and Conditions

Nicholas Roerich 'Everest' 1938

Why theorise capitalism? As Mallory said of Mount Everest, “because it’s there”.

Today begins a new series titled The Economic Sociology of Capitalism. I will draw from a draft chapter that I sent to Peter Dougherty — chief editor at Princeton University Press — in October 2003 along with my book proposal. 

Unbeknown to me Dougherty was at that precise moment in continual communication with (1993 Nobel Prize winner) Douglass North while he prepared the manuscript of North's 2005 book with Princeton. 

All my submissions to publishers and journals were critical of Douglass North for ignoring the impersonality of modern institutions. Dougherty wrote to say he liked my proposal and encouraged me to send more chapters, which I could not do until 2006 when the manuscript was finished. 

I finally had it published with Routledge in 2009 as Capitalism, Institutions, and Economic Development. This book was the first to explain the positive roles of institutional impersonality in economic and political development. 

In the same year Douglass North published Violence and Social Orders, coauthored with John Wallis and Barry Weingast. Their core argument, which they proudly proclaimed as their entirely original breakthrough in social science, was the impersonality of modern institutions, i.e. my idea. 

The central arguments of North, Wallis and Weingast from 2009 onwards relating to "impersonal relationships", "impersonal organisations", "impersonal administration", "impersonal rules" and "institutional impersonality" are, in essence, identical to the breakthrough ideas I had sent to Peter Dougherty and numerous other publishers without success between 2003 and 2006. 

Previously, all mentions of 'impersonal' in North's writing referred only to 'impersonal exchange' in economic transactions.

An eminent expert on Max Weber who reviewed an article that I had submitted on this topic to the prestigious American Journal of Sociology in 2004 wrote:

"The key argument of the author of this particular paper — that modern capitalism operates primarily through interactions between people who are not connected through personal networks, already know each other, and so on —  cannot be found in the literature, as far as I know… the author should be credited with being the first to put it on paper."  

A rather significant new idea, in other words. But the journal refused to publish it.

Michael G. Heller ©2014

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