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The Contradictions of Modern Societies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Jon Elster
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Extract

MANCUR OLSON HAS WRITTEN A BOOK IN THE GRAND tradition, trying to explain how societies are undermined by their own success. In his own words, there is an ‘internal contradiction’ (p. 145) in the development of stable societies. I want to discuss Olson's views in the light of other works in the same tradition, works that also set out to explain how success tends to be self-defeating in various ways. Among the classics of social theory, I have singled out the writings of Marx, Veblen and Schumpeter. A contemporary work that suggests itself for the same kind of comparison is the recent book by Douglass North, Structure and Change in Economic History. Before I go on to compare Olson'stheory with these competing explanations, I must briefly set out the main elements of the theory itself. This must of necessity be a very simplified statement, but the later discussion will allow me to add some nuances.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1984 , pp. 304 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1984

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References

1 Olson, Mancur, The Rise and Decline of Nations, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1982.Google Scholar

2 North, Douglass, Structure and Change in Economic History, New York, Norton, 1981.Google Scholar

3 For the special case of chains, Markov, see my Explaining Technical Change, Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 61 ff., 148 Google Scholar ff.

4 In addition, one might add that some interest groups are inherently unstable because of high internal turn-over rates. Even if such a group succeeded in forming as a collective actor, it might not survive the renewal of membership. Student politics may offer an example.

5 The decision of this encompassing organization might simply be to revert to unrestricted competition. Free-rider behaviour with respect to the low-level collective action might be what is needed to overcome the free-rider problem with respect to the higher-level collective action.

6 For further discussion, see Appendix 2 to my Explaining Technical Change.

7 Coleman, D. C., ‘Gentlemen and players’, Economic History Review, 2nd Series 26(1973), 92–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Veblen, T., Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, New York, The Viking Press 1939, p. 123.Google Scholar

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid., p. 124.

11 Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations, p. 252–53.

12 Schumpeter, J., Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 2nd ed., New York, Harper, 1947, p. 134.Google Scholar

13 Actually Schumpeter did not even believe in the static inefficiency of oligopolies; see his Business Cycles, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1939, pp. 445–46, 775.

14 Robinson, Joan, The Accumulation of Capital, London, Macmillan, 1956, p. 87.Google Scholar

15 Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, p. 92 ff.

16 Ibid., p. 83.

17 See for instance Nelson, R. and Winter, S., An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1982,Google Scholar ch. 9.

18 D. North, Structure and Change in Economic History, op. cit., p. 28.

19 Cp. my ‘Economic backwardness and historical materialism’, in Ball, T. and Farr, J. (eds), After Marx, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar